


snow in april

by skuls



Category: The X-Files
Genre: AU, Case Fic, Episode: s08e15 DeadAlive, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-10-31 12:32:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 48,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10899432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: Dealing with the fallout from Mulder's return, Mulder and Scully find themselves in the midst of a strange case in a small town.





	1. Chapter 1

If there was some kind of self-help book for coming back from the dead, Mulder was considering buying a copy. Or investing in one. Maybe Billy Miles could help him if he wasn't a dangerous super soldier who had an alien virus that Mulder himself had narrowly escaped. (He was going through a bit of a crisis, to put it mildly.)

Scully hadn't wanted to tell him any details about his ordeal - she'd looked on the verge of crying almost constantly these past few days - so it had been the wiry man who'd shown up at his hotel room, the New Partner, who'd explained everything. Skinner had helped, something of a sheepish, embarrassed look on his face. (Mulder suspected he felt guilty about what had happened in Oregon. He should reassure Skinner that it wasn't his fault.) And Scully had slumped in the chair by his bed, one hand curled around her clearly-pregnant stomach and the other clamped hard around his hand, clutching at his fingers like he might slip away. She stared at her knees the entire time. At one point, Mulder thought he saw a tear hit her nose.

Doggett looked uncomfortable - was he scared of the fact that Mulder was perpetually a zombie or just awkward in social situations? - but he shook Mulder's hand and said it was nice to meet him and he had heard a lot of good things from “Agent Scully”. Mulder nodded awkwardly and wished he'd never gone to Oregon.

“He's a good man,” Scully said in a rush as soon as Skinner and Doggett had left. “He helped me look for you… he saved my life.”

Mulder had been prepared to say nothing or mutter something semi-polite, but he froze a little at her last words. “Saved your life?” he repeated softly, squeezing her fingers. _What happened to her?_

She looked up, a little surprised; like the idea hadn't occurred to her that he would be worried about her. “Yes,” she said. “But it was nothing. I'm fine.”

Same old Scully, pregnant or not. Except for something, a slight difference. She'd always had a slight tendency to hover after his ordeals, but she'd been different since this. Clingier, more teary. She'd lain with her head on his chest for such a long time that he'd rasped something about how her back would be killing her in the morning against her scalp. And so she'd sat up, brushed her fingers through his hair again, and asked softly if he thought he'd be okay to move over a little bit before helping him scoot over and crawling into the tiny bed beside him. She pressed her face into his neck, right below his chin where his pulse beat against her forehead, and breathed shudderingly into his skin. He wrapped an arm around her and felt her stomach under his hand, felt the baby kick. Scully made a startled sound against his throat and held him tighter. “Scully?” he whispered, mind racing. _What, what, what..._

“I love you,” she murmured, voice cracking. She'd never said it before.

He wanted to ask her everything all at once (the baby, there was a baby?), but her breathing was slowing to a peaceful lull. She'd looked exhausted, before, when he opened his eyes and saw her looking extraordinarily happy and sad all at once as she reached out to touch him. _He_ was exhausted - it had felt like he hadn't slept in months (which Mulder found plainly ironic at this point, knowing what he did about his ordeal). He moved his arm up to curl lazily around her shoulder and closed his eyes.

And now here he was, some kind of dead-alive anomaly that belonged in the X-Files. It was some kind of karma, he figured, for putting Scully in them.

Scully was still looking at him like he was the sun - stunned and a little blinky and like he was some kind of miracle - and all he could think about was how he wasn't there to save her life. Instead, this Doggett guy was. He cleared his throat and looked away, although he didn't let go of her hand. (He wasn't that mean, and besides that, he was enjoying the contact even if he had no idea what was going on.) “So,” he said. “Do I still have a job?”

When he looked back at Scully, she still looked a little stunned - but for an entirely different reason, he suspected. “I - of course, Mulder,” she said softly. “As soon as you've recovered. Doggett will… need some help, I expect.” She withdrew her hand from his and smoothed her thumb over her index fingernail. They were ragged at the ends like she'd been biting them, with no polish. He hadn't seen them looking like that since after the second time with Pfaster.

“You're not coming back?” he said - stupidly, it was obvious she wasn't. Her hand hadn't left her abdomen the entire time.

She ran her thumbnail over and over her fingernail. “I… don't expect so.”

It was _more_ than obvious, but he couldn't help being something like disappointed. Seven years of partnership. “I… understand,” he tried.

Her fingers tightened around each other. “I thought we might…” Scully stopped mid-sentence. “Never mind. Mulder, do you need anything?”

He shook his head. He wanted to ask why she was running his errands when she was the pregnant one here, but it would also contradict his asshole question about if she was coming back. He just wanted her to hold his hand and talk about meaningless stuff so that, for the moment, they could pretend that nothing was wrong. The cadence of her voice - or anyone's, really - made it easy to pretend nothing was wrong. Like he couldn't hear the dirt on the coffin when he closed his eyes. “No, I'm fine.”

She nodded. “They're running some tests. We should know how you're doing in a few hours.”

The room lulled over into an awkward silence. Scully excused herself to use the restroom. Mulder shifted in his bed, leaning into the pillow, and tried not to think about the dark memories flitting at the back of his mind.

(They came back in waves, phantom bursts of hot pain and his throat raw with screaming for help. He held his breath to keep from crying out until Scully came back.)

\---

A clean bill of health, Scully told him, looking happier than she had since he'd woken up. No brain disease.

_Shit_ , he realized, _she found out_. Of course she found out, she probably wouldn't stop digging until she found something. He wondered if she'd made use of his gravestone. Of course she had, it was a morbid but obvious thought. The truly morbid thing was that they had both seen each other's gravestone - he'd seen hers during her abduction. When she'd gotten sick, he'd found out she kept it and had the date changed, and it had made him want to vomit. (Had she always expected to die on the job? Was that why she kept it?)

“That's good,” he said, to make her happy.

She smiled a little, looking down at her shoes. “I was… worried,” she said softly. “I didn’t want to get you back just to lose you again.”

He tried to tease a little - at least that was _something_ he could do. “You know me, Scully, I always come out okay in the end,” he said, reaching out to tuck some hair behind her ear. She didn't say anything or laugh, but she did lean into his fingers. He put his hand against her cheek, stroking her cheekbone with his thumb. It seemed like all he could do in the moment was touch her and try not to fall apart.

She put her hand over his, eyes slipping closed. “You can go home tomorrow,” she said softly. Her hand was warmer than his. (Something leftover from death?) “I kept your apartment for you.”

He stared at her with something like astonishment. “Scully…”

“I fed the fish.” She smoothed a thumb over the back of his hand.

He reached out, touching her hip and motioned her closer. She crawled on the bed beside him, leaning into his side, and he put his head on her shoulder. “I'm sorry,” she said to his scalp. “It's just…”

“It's okay,” he whispered, touching her wrist. “Don't leave.”

They scooted down on the bed and Scully pulled the thin blanket over them. Mulder hadn't been able to get warm all night, but with her curled around him he was warmer than he'd been in months.

Her swelled abdomen was pressed against his side and he could feel a tiny foot behind it. He knew that at some point they'd have to talk about the baby, but at the moment all he could come up with was, “The baby's kicking.”

She smiled into the side of his neck. “It's been doing that more lately,” she said. “I think it's you.”

\---

Scully tried to carry his suitcase - the bag she'd apparently sent Skinner back to DC to pack for him after he'd woken up - out to the car, but Mulder snatched it back. “Come on, Scully,” he said, motioning to her stomach.

“Mulder, I am still perfectly capable of doing things,” she said, with the first hint of irritation he'd heard since he'd woken up. (He was relieved at least _she_ was getting back to normal; he'd been worried about her. Him on the other hand…)

“Yeah, and so am I,” he replied calmly (or more calmly than he felt, at least), tugging the suitcase out of her hand. She looked irritated but she let him, rounding the car to sit in the driver's side with the keys dangling from her hand. Her car smelled different when he opened it and climbed into the passenger seat. _Six months,_ he thought. Six fucking months, and all he could remember from them was a series of brief snippets of pain and torture and then nothing. She had been here the entire time, had continued living her life and investigated X-Files and been through months of gestation. She had buried him. He swallowed and pressed his hand against the dashboard as the car moved out of the parking space - lurching forward; at least Scully's driving was the same, reckless and heart-pounding. (It was a good reminder that his heart was still beating.) “Scully?” he asked gingerly.

“Hmm?” she said absently, flipping on her turn signal. Her hair fell across her cheeks as she leaned forward to look back and forth; it had gotten longer while he was gone.

“Where was I buried?”

She flinched violently, turning onto the road sharply enough that his side hit the armrest hard. Her hands clutched the steering wheel so hard that her knuckles turned white. “North Carolina,” she said. “Raleigh. With your family.”

He swallowed again, against the burn of nausea in his throat. His fingers drummed nervously against the dashboard. He was going to be buried, he'd known that when he found out he was dying, but the concept of coming back from it was something entirely different. He'd tried not to picture Scully at his funeral, and now it was all he could see. He was trying not to hear the thunks of the dirt above his head, or feel the rough, splintery wood under him, but it was practically surrounding him, choking him. Dirt in his throat and nose and under his fingernails. He was alive, then dead. Now what was he?

“I want to go there,” he said.

Scully blinked, squeezing the wheel tighter. “You do?”

“Yeah,” he said in a rush. He'd always been one to look for answers, his entire life, and now he needed more. He needed to understand what had happened to him, look it in the face. She'd had the same need after her abduction, she'd understand. “I need to see it,” he tried to explain. “I need to understand.”

“Understand what?” Scully bit out. “You died, and now you're back. It's a miracle. I know you believe in miracles.”

_Never give up on a miracle,_ he'd told her when the IVF failed. And she hadn't, and she hadn't given up on him either. He was more than grateful for that. He hated letting her down, but this was something he needed to do. “I just need to go there,” he said, his tone soaked with apology. “I'm sorry, Scully. I'll call you from the road, okay?”

She bit her lip. Hard. “No,” she said firmly. “I'm coming with you.” He opened his mouth to say something - either _you don't have to_ or _thank you_ \- but she cut him off. “I am your doctor, and you were in a fucking hospital bed a few hours ago. You are not going alone.”

“Oh, you're my _doctor_. Are we not partners anymore?” he said before he could stop himself. Goddamnit, he was a horrible person. He didn't deserve to have a second chance, especially with someone like Scully.

She clenched the wheel harder. “You're always going to be my partner, Mulder.” She said it in a furious sort of rush, like it should be obvious. “So I'm coming with you to North Carolina. It's been six goddamn months.” She swallowed the end of her sentence, like she didn't want to finish it. The walls were coming back up, for both of them.

“You're pregnant.” Stating the fucking obvious.

“I am perfectly aware.” She merged easily onto the interstate, jaw clenched. At least his ability to piss her off hadn't faded.

He watched her silently, her face frozen in something like anger. He wanted to grab her hand. He wanted to go back to the hospital bed and hold her again. No, he wanted to go back to six months ago, to that night she'd spent in his apartment before he'd decided to leave, when she'd been sick and fallen asleep on his couch, cheek plastered to the leather, and he'd sat beside her on the floor with the file balanced on his knees and kissed her forehead and thought, _I'm not losing her again. Never again._ But he had anyway; despite his best efforts, they'd lost each other. He had looked for her in the dark and she wasn't there and he wanted her to hold his hand.

They drove for almost twenty minutes before he said a tentative, “Thank you.” She turned her head towards him, so he added, “I'm glad I'm not alone.” He hadn't been able to do anything without her for eight years, now.

“Of course, Mulder,” she said quietly, her face softening. “Of course.”

\---

He was driving. Except for the fact that he couldn't remember why or for how long and he didn't know where they were. No, wait, he could remember the why: they'd stopped in a gas station in Virginia and Scully had gone into the little store and come back yawning and he'd insisted on driving. The last thing he could remember was seeing was Scully curled up in the seat, seat belt stretched around her. And then nothing. All black and yellow-white dots like stars.

Mulder blinked furiously, pulling off on the side of the road. Where the hell were they and how long had they been driving? He glanced at the car clock: 9:27. They'd left the hospital in the early afternoon; they should've been in Raleigh hours ago. By the pressure in his ears, he guessed that they were in the mountains.

“Fuck,” he muttered, letting down the window. An almost unnaturally cold wind blew over him. “ _Fuck_ .” He turned to see Scully, still asleep with her hair falling over her face. He reached out to touch her and was relieved when her pulse was still _there_ and steady; she wasn't drugged or something. “Scully,” he said softly, nudging her. “Scully, wake up.”

“Mmph,” she grunted. “Mul’ler? Where are we?’

“I don't know,” he said. The headlights shone like the larger version of their flashlight beams on a rickety wooden sign. “Somewhere called Calvert Pass, population 747.”

“What?” She shifted in her seat, rubbing her eyes, and leaned close to the window, nose almost touching it. The air conditioner had been blowing, but it seemed too cold for it now: her breath fogged the glass. Mulder switched it off. “Mulder, where did you _take_ us?”

“I don't know! I don't remember driving us here.”

She turned, eyes widening in fear. “Mulder, are you okay?” she whispered. She leaned over the console to feel his forehead, shirt straining her stomach.

“I'm fine,” he said. “I don't know what happened, though… why I would black out and bring us _here_. I've never even heard of Calvert Pass.” He had a terrible thought, swallowed back a gag. “Scully, where was I… returned? Where did you find me?” He had a terrifying picture of his crumpled body on this cold and lonely mountain, dirt and dead leaves and Scully leaning over him.

She was just as horrified, and tried to hide it by turning to her purse on the floor of the car. “Montana,” she mumbled. “Not… Calvert Pass, Montana. This doesn't look like Montana anyway.”

“Oh,” he said, and ran his finger over the seam of the consol. “Well, I would say this is connected to my abduction, except my theory about the Brown Mountain Lights and UFOs were proved wrong. Are we near Brown Mountain? I think hallucinogenic mushrooms are the last thing we need.”

Scully was rummaging in her purse. She pulled out a pen light. “What's the last thing you remember?”

“You falling asleep.”

“You don't remember anything about driving here? Anything at all?”

He shook his head.

Scully looked extremely concerned. “I think I should drive for the time being,” she said, unbuckling her seatbelt. “Let's find a place to stay in town and we'll take you to the doctor in the morning.”

“Scully, I'm fine. And besides, I don't think they'll have a hotel in a town with a population of 700.”

“You forgot the other 47,” Scully said, opening the door on her side. Mulder took that as a closing to the argument and got out of the car. It was freezing cold outside, like he hadn't really missed the fleeting months of winter. He didn't think the climate was cold this time of year in North Carolina or Virginia or wherever the hell they were. Somewhere in the south, where springs were not usually cold.

As they passed each other in front of the car, Scully reached out and squeezed his arm. He welcomed the warm pressure.

“It's cold outside,” he commented as they climbed into the car. “Strange for this time of year. Maybe we should buy some coats at the local Wal-Mart imitation.”

“How do you feel now? Any dizziness or nausea?” Scully asked as she started the car.

“No dizziness, no nausea, no fatigue, no spotty vision,” he listed, propping his feet up on the dashboard. Scully made a face at him. “I feel fine, seriously. The doctor said I was in perfect health, right?”

She bit down on her lip, and he remembered he hadn't told her about his brain disease. “Yeah,” she said softly. “But a few days ago, you were _dead_ , Mulder.”

It was his turn to wince. He looked out the window at the rocks on the mountainside flitting by as they looped up and down the curving rounds. “And you fixed me, right?” he mumbled.

“Something like that,” she said quietly. “Skinner helped.”

“Good old Skinman,” he said, and was pleasantly surprised with her quiet laugh.

Their headlights swept up the side of the mountain, the only lights for miles. There were almost no lights from the town. It was definitely tiny, almost invisible. There was a convenience store - not a chain either of them recognized - that was the only thing open, its lights strangely muted on the dark street. They stopped to buy coats - Scully was definitely shivering, and there was no way that was good for the baby.

“Is there a hotel in this town?” Mulder asked the only cashier in the store as he rang them up.

The man laughed. “Little too small for that. There are some cabins up for rent just outside of town, though. I can give you directions.”

“Please,” Scully said, a hand ghosting her stomach.

“Why's it so cold up here?” Mulder asked, leaning against the counter as the man scribbled down directions on the back of their receipts. “Some kind of cold front?”

The man shrugged. “Maybe because we're in the mountains? I dunno.I don't question it.” He handed them the receipt and their bags. “Y'all have a nice night now.”

“You seem awfully interested in the weather, Mulder. You think it's an X-File?” Scully teased, buttoning the oversized jacket over her. Her hair got caught in her collar, stretched over her cheek. Mulder thought about brushing the strands back.

“You know me, I can't leave well enough alone,” he said instead. _Which is why I was abducted in the first place._

“Well, I can assure you it's just some unusual weather. We'll be gone after tomorrow anyway,” Scully said, opening the car door. “And we can head to Raleigh.”

“Sounds like a plan,” he said, brushing the hair behind her ear. She didn't turn towards him, but he could see her smile. “Seeing as how neither of us are in X-File solving condition.”

“I'll have you know I've solved several X-Files recently,” she teased, crossing her arms over her chest. “My maternity leave started a few days ago.”

He wanted to ask her about them, but something else was bothering him. “Just _now_ ?” he said. “Scully, the job’s _dangerous_.” Her hospital bills since 1993 were excessive; it was one of the things he hated himself for. And the baby…

She shrugged. “Doggett let me choose the cases, so I shied away from the risky ones. And I… took some time off after… the funeral.” She looked down at the ground, at a murky puddle under their feet. They were both wearing tennis shoes; in his case, it was all they had at the hospital, but in her case, he guessed it had something to do with swollen feet. Of course, he didn't know anything about pregnancies. He was clueless, desperately so. He'd have to work on that.

“Scully?” he asked.

“Hmm?” Her chilled palm slipped into his.

“How far along are you?”

She was still looking at the ground, but she squeezed his fingers. “Eight months,” she said softly.

Eight months. Which meant she'd been pregnant when she'd been sick in Oregon, when she'd crashed to the ground, when she'd held that baby and he'd told her there was more than this. There was so much more, and he should've stayed with her. He wished he'd stayed with her and never left. There was so much more coming. They had a future.

He didn't say anything because he didn't know what to say. But he tugged their joined hands until she was in his arms. She buried her face in his chest, wrapping both arms around him as tightly as she could with the baby. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and lowered the other hand to her stomach. He hesitated, and she grabbed his hand and pressed it into place. The baby kicked under his palm. “The baby knows your voice,” she said into his coat. “I made sure that it would. I wanted it to know you.”

(He had to hold back tears at this. He pressed his nose into her hair and felt his child kick under his hand.)

\---

The cabin was a little wooden cottage-type clustered with other little wooden cabins around a river in the woods. The owner of the cabins had been asleep but had gladly rented them the cabins, to Mulder's surprise. Most people in his experience did not like to be woken up, even if it was only ten at night. (Scully tended to get grouchy.)  The inside was heated, gratefully, and there was a bedroom off to the side. Scully dropped the bags on the counter, pulling out her cell phone. “Better check in with my mom,” she said. “I told her we would be in Raleigh hours ago, and she's had… a worried tendency. Lately.”

“I can understand,” Mulder said - he'd spent most of their partnership worrying about her. “I'm going to go take a shower, okay?”

“I think that's a good idea,” she said, reaching up to push some hair off of his forehead. “Be careful, okay?”

He nodded before disappearing into the bathroom. He hated being treated like an invalid, especially when he didn't feel like one (blackout sessions be damned), but he secretly had always liked Scully fussing over him.

Inside the shower was completely different. He realized in the moment of standing under the pounding spray of hot water that this was the first he'd been alone since the hospital. He closed his eyes for a second and it was all back - the blades, the ship. Her name in his mouth. He pressed his hand against the tile and tried not to scream. _You're safe,_ he tried to tell himself. _Scully is in the next room. She's having your baby. You're safe, you’re safe._ The flashing of images got to be too much, so he pressed his mouth into the skin of his upper arm and screamed, the sound muffled by the water.

Scully was waiting for him when he exited the shower, sitting on the bed. “Hey,” she said. “Are you o-”

He halted her mid-sentence, cupping the back of her skull and kissing her desperately, her hair trailing through his fingers. She made a soft sound and tugged him closer, her fingers curling into his shirt. “Mulder…” she mumbled.

“I missed you, Scully,” he whispered, stroking her cheek with his thumb. “I really, really missed you.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for depictions of death and ptsd.

The dreams returned, even though Scully was right on the other side of the bed. He woke up gasping her name and was relieved to see her right there, on her side with her hair falling across her face. His pulse was elevated and he collapsed against the pillows, trying to settle his breathing. He could hear Scully telling him to breathe deeply and so he tried that, reaching out to touch her cheek. He crawled across the mattress and pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead. 

White light was streaming in from between the curtains. He shifted a little and saw snow on the ground. A lot of snow, covering the ground like a massive lumpy quilt. 

“Scully,” he whispered. “Hey, Scully, it snowed.”

“Mm, go back to sleep, Mulder,” she grumbled into the pillows. “I'm tired. I haven't slept well in months.”

_ Oh, Scully. _ He leaned down to kiss her cheek. “It snowed. A lot. Several inches, I think; maybe a foot. Don't you think that's unusual weather?”

“That's nice,” she said, eyes still closed. She tugged the comforter up over her head, tenting both of them in darkness. “I'm sure we'll have plenty of moments like this in this next eighteen years, though, so I'm going back to sleep, okay?”

He sighed, kissing her again. “I'm going to go make coffee.”

“See if they have decaf,” she muttered into the pillow.  _ Damn it _ , he thought; he'd forgotten. This was going to take some practice.

He tested his domesticity (rusty from his days of dating - dating, was that the right word? - Scully), and made a pot of coffee and a cup of tea (they didn't have decaf). He considered the benefits of going for a run, and then reconsidered the possibility of either scaring Scully or just plain pissing her off (she'd say he wasn't healthy enough), or the possibility that he'd have another flashback while he was gone. He sat on the couch and flipped through a Dennis Lehane novel until Scully staggered out of the bedroom, clad in his Knicks t-shirt. “Decaf?” she asked hopefully. 

Mulder shook his head, getting to his feet and trailing into the kitchen area. “Tea. I'll heat it up.”

“What heathens.” She sighed and threw open the refrigerator. “No decaf and no… food in general.”

Mulder turned to look at the general emptiness of the fridge. “I guess you have to bring your own,” he offered helplessly. 

“We should have gotten eggs or something,” Scully said, frustrated, as she threw the refrigerator door closed. “There's nothing to eat and the baby is hungry.”

“I can go to town and get you something,” Mulder said, sipping a cup of the crappy instant coffee. He winced at the bitter tang; did everything taste worse since he'd come back? The hasty sandwiches they'd bought from the store deli had sat like a rock in his stomach, and the hospital food hadn't been any better, of course. 

Scully leaned against the fridge, pulling at the sleeves of her sweater. “Mulder, no; the roads will be horrible.”

“Eighteen years in New England, Scully; I know a thing or two about snowy roads.” He took another sip and grimaced, dumped the clumpy coffee down the sink. 

“Mountain roads,” she said. “They're probably not salted, and there's at least one side of the road that's a drop, usually. It's too dangerous.”

“You need food, though.” He opened the cabinet investigatively and pulled out a container of stale Oreos, offering it to her. “Unless you want some expired cookies for breakfast.”

She grinned playfully. “I was thinking more along the lines of seeing if the neighbors can lend us something for now. It's April, I'm sure the snow will be melted soon and we can go get you checked out.” Her brow furrowed and she motioned him closer, bringing her head to his forehead. “Speaking of, how do you feel? Any more blackouts?”

“No,” he started, and then reconsidered. “Not… exactly.”

A panicked look came over her face, and her fingers froze against his hair. “What do you mean,  _ not exactly? _ Mulder…”

“No more blackouts,” he said quickly. “Actually… flashbacks. To my abduction.”

“Flashbacks?”

“Like I'm back there.” He swallowed unevenly.  _ Did you ever experience anything like that?  _ he was ready to ask her before he remembered that she didn't remember anything from her abduction. 

Scully looked horrified. “Oh, Mulder.” She reached up to touch him on his cheek, where the scars were fading. 

“It's fine,” he added quickly. “I'm sure they'll fade eventually. It's probably just a temporary effect…”

“I never should've let you leave the hospital,” she said softly, pulling at the hem of her shirt. 

For some unknown reason, this irritated him to no end. “I'm  _ fine, _ ” he said pointedly, even though he loathed those words when they came from her mouth. “Really. I'll be okay in a couple of days.”

“We should let a doctor make that judgement.”

“You're a doctor, aren't you?” He slid the stale Oreos back into the cabinet and headed for the door, grabbing his shoes and coat. 

“Mulder? Where are you going?”

She was sad and worried and he was a terrible person but he was tired of hospitals, tired of the whole damn thing. “I'm going to the neighbors and see if they'll lend us an egg or two,” he said, letting the door bang shut. He'd apologize when he got back, attempt to make her breakfast without burning it. He just needed a moment to cool off. Some fresh fucking air to clear his head.

The driveway was gravel under the snow and twisted off into the woods. He'd have to either walk all the way around or cross the river to get to the nearest cabin, and based on his tendency for flashbacks when he was alone he figured the driveway was a safer bet, because at least the driveway didn’t run the risk of falling into cold, running water. (Hypothermia is a bitch, he'd said to Scully after Antarctica, and she'd rolled her eyes and smiled, looking down at the cotton blanket over her lap in embarrassment. She looked down a lot when she smiled, like she'd been caught off-guard and was embarrassed. He loved that about her.)

The snow crunched under his feet. He could feel his brain edging on an unbidden memory - flashes of pinched alien faces and blades and brief moments of pain - and he clenched his jaw in determination and kept going up the slippery snow. His foot skidded sharply under him and he swore and shot his arm out towards the treeline, palm scraping against the bark and steadying him.

He made it to the cabin across the river without going into a flashback, but he wasn't entirely sure how. He felt like he was crumbling at the seams. He leaned heavily against the side of the house. It was all coming back in waves, heavy and crushing like the ocean. 

_ Get eggs, go home, apologize to Scully,  _ he instructed himself, and mounted the stairs to the cabin on shaky legs. He started to knock on the door, but it swing inward unbidden at the pressure from his fist; unlocked and slightly ajar.

Mulder shivered; the entire situation reminded him of the beginning of a horror movie, he could practically hear the suspenseful music. Goddamnit, why had he taken his gun to Oregon; unless the aliens had a lost and found, he'd never get it back now. He should've brought Scully's. “Hello?” he called, trying to sound like a friendly, polite neighbor. (Which his own neighbors could attest to the fact that he  _ wasn't _ .) He pushed the door open a little wider, and froze.

A man and a woman were sprawled on the kitchen floor, the man lying on top of the woman as if trying to shield her, his face buried into her neck. The woman was on her side, her face facing the wall. Neither of them moved.  

Mulder felt something thunk in the pit of his stomach. There was no blood or gore, nothing too sickening, but he still had a terrible feeling. He knew the telltale signs of death. He drew closer silently, unable to ask them if they were okay; the words were thick and closing his throat. His shoes squeaked on the tile.

He didn't see until he got close: the woman's eyes were blank. Unseeing. Their chests were still.

Mulder felt the burn of bile in his throat and swallowed it back. He would not vomit. He was a goddamn FBI agent; he'd seen crime scenes twenty times more violent than this. He'd been in the brains of a hundred killers; he'd seen a death fetishist stand over the woman he loved. He would not vomit. He felt for the pulse of the woman, then the man. Silence. Cold, dead skin. Scully's autopsy terms flew through his brain. (Who had autopsied him?) He had shielded Scully this way once, on a scummy shower floor years ago while the PTA prepared to sacrifice them to the devil. They’d almost died. He had died, and come back, and faked his death and come back and then. And then.

He stumbled to the door, shoving it open clumsily. The step was covered in snow and he stumbled out on it, the cold biting into his face and jolting him awake. “Scully,” he called, and his voice was too quiet. The wind wouldn't carry it. (Scully, Scully, please, he'd screamed on the ship and she couldn't hear him.) “Scully!” he shouted, his voice cracking echoing over the half-frozen river.

The back door slammed open, and Scully appeared on the screen porch, still in only his Knicks t-shirt. “Mulder?” she called back, terrified. The wind rustled the hem of the t-shirt around her thighs. “”What’s wrong?” 

His throat still burned. “Call the police,” he shouted raspily. “Our neighbors are dead.”

He couldn't see her expression from here, but he could see her nod and disappear into the house. He would stay with the dead bodies, he owed it to them. They lay prone and stiff on the kitchen floor. He paced in circles around them, trying to get back into his FBI agent stance - what has happened here, who could've done this? 

(Who had found him, was it Scully? Had she looked into his eyes and seen nothing? Who had closed his eyes? Did she drop the first handful of dirt? He thought he could hear her sobs if he closed his eyes.)

He vomited into the sink and rinsed it out before going out on the porch. He stood in the cold, edges of his jacket flapping in the wind. He tried not to cry. 

\---

Two police cars with chains on the wheels and a sirenless ambulance came almost a half hour later. Scully had shown up a few minutes after he'd told her to call the police in warmer clothes, her phone dangling from her fingers. He brushed the snow from the front step despite her protest and the two of them sat down side by side on the chilled stone. He didn't touch her, didn't know what to say, but their shoulders brushed each time she moved and the small contact was comforting. 

A couple of officers and EMTs trailed inside while a female officer interviewed them on the front step. “Deputy Mari Haswell,” she introduced herself, extending her hand. “You're FBI, right?”

“Yes,” Scully said politely, shaking her hand. “I'm Agent Dana Scully, and this is Agent Fox Mulder.” Mulder nodded, shaking Deputy Haswell’s hand as well, and fumbled for his badge in his jacket before he remembered he hadn't seen it since his return. "Mulder doesn't have his badge, I can vouch for him,” Scully explained, presenting her badge. “We're kind of… off-duty.”

Haswell’s eyes flicked down towards Scully's abdomen for a split second like she understood before looking back at them. “That's fine,” she said. “We'll take care of everything, why don't you just tell me what happened?”

“I was the one who found the bodies,” Mulder said. 

Haswell scribbled on her pad. “How did you come across the victims?”

“We didn't have anything for breakfast in our cabin - the, uh, the cabin over there - so I came over to see if we could borrow a couple eggs or something. But when I knocked on the door, it swung open on its own.” There was the flash sound of the photographer behind them; he shivered. “The bodies were in the kitchen where I left them. I took their pulse, on their necks, and I rinsed out the sink - I, um, I got sick after I saw the bodies - but I didn't touch anything otherwise. I called to Scully, and she called you guys right away.” It embarrassed him to admit he had thrown up and it probably showed; he could feel his face growing hot. Neither of the women commented on it, though; Scully's fingers brushed over his palm in a comforting gesture.

Haswell nodded as he talked, the pen bobbing over the notepad. “Had you had any contact with them prior to this?”

“No, we just got here last night,” Scully said. 

“Did you hear anything last night or this morning? Any strange sounds, screams?” Her voice was almost a monotone, like she’d asked these things a million times.

“No,” Mulder said. 

“No,” Scully confirmed. “We both slept heavily last night.” 

Haswell nodded. “Well, I think you're okay to go. But call us if you remember anything else, and we'll call you if we have any more questions. Phone numbers?”

Scully rattled off her number - Mulder wasn't certain if he could actually remember his cell phone number, but it didn't matter because he didn't have a cell phone anymore, not since the abduction. Besides, he was focused on something else. Haswell seemed almost… disinterested. Like this was something normal that happened. Definitely not how he expected a small-town cop to respond to the death of two tourists. “Do you know the identity of the victims?” he asked, curious.

“Not yet,” Haswell said, tucking the notepad into her pocket. 

He remembered the pale, unmarked skin of the victims. Rigor mortis. And no visible cause of death, despite the man shielding the woman. Or had it been some kind of dying comfort? The way their bodies were arranged suggested some kind of attack, but no visible cause of death. “Do you have any ideas about cause of death?” 

“The coroner will figure it out,” Haswell said. “Thank you for your help, Agents.”

“Of course,” Scully said. Her hand curled around his elbow to motion him down the driveway, and he followed quietly. He smelled something suspicious in all this; it seemed like the familiarity of small town cops trying to hide something, but he sensed it wasn’t the time to bring it up.

As they went down the driveway, shoes crunching in the snow, the EMTs rolled out two stretchers with black body bags. Scully's hand held his elbow tighter and she leaned into him, just a little bit. He couldn't take his eyes off of them, the slow descent into the ambulance over the snow. His stomach twisted and he tried to keep the memories from drudging up, closing his eyes against it all.

\---

They still didn't have any food, but Mulder didn't feel much like eating. Scully sat on the couch beside him and dug her fingernails into the sticky flap of the Oreo box. “Want one?” she asked Mulder, and he shook his head. She twisted one in half, exposing the soft white cream. 

“Mulder, are you okay?” she asked. Her hand landed on his knee, comfortingly, and squeezed. 

He nodded. The woman's blank gaze flashed behind his eyes. He swallowed hard. “Sad… about those people,” he said. 

She nodded, said, “Yeah,” and didn't look at him. She broke one of the halves in two and black cookie dust coated her fingers. 

Mulder reached for the remote and tried to flip on the TV. The screen stayed dark. 

“You're thinking about it, aren't you?” Scully said. “The crime scene.”

He had a habit of doing something or other like this, concocting scenarios in the back of his mind, trying to piece together the puzzle. He'd felt a personal connection to crime scenes ever since Samantha (since his father, since his mother, since Scully), but this felt different. He'd been on the other side, had felt whatever the victims were feeling. And now he was back.

“There were no footprints,” he said.

Scully squeezed his knee again and he turned to look at her. “Leading up to the house?”

“Yeah,” he said. “None. Which means the murderer must've come during the night and the snow covered up his footprints. Rigor mortis had set in.”

“Maybe it wasn't a murder,” Scully said. “Natural causes, or a double suicide of some sort.”

“Did you see the way the bodies were? He was  _ shielding _ her from something.”

She broke an Oreo in half matter-of-factly - if it was even  _ possible  _ to break an Oreo matter-of-factly, but if anyone could do it, it was Scully. “Or he wanted to hold her in their last moments.”

“Come on, Scully,” Mulder said petulantly. “Even you, _ Dr. Skeptismo _ , has to admit that something is amiss here.”

“Nice  _ Friends  _ reference,” she said wryly, and in the moment he couldn’t even believe he’d managed to make some kind of joke. He suddenly remembered watching that episode in her hotel room on a case; he’d called her Dr. Skeptismo for a week (see, Scully, because you’re a doctor and you’re skeptical).

“Thought you'd enjoy it,” he said instead of that.

She grinned. “Mulder, I'll admit that the whole thing is strange. And I wouldn't dismiss the theory of murder. But I don't think it's an X-File.”

“I didn't say it was an X-File.”

“You didn't have to.”

He muttered something disagreeable under his breath.

Scully's palm pressed against his knee. “Mulder, I know it's tempting. But you… you just got back. You should take a step back, let the local cops do their job. Rest, recuperate.”

Mulder was not in the habit of taking a step back, and Scully knew this - based on her tone alone, she did, she sounded like she didn't really believe he would. Mulder went back to trying to flip on the TV, his thumb hitting the little red button stubbornly. He didn't know what he could say in the moment.

“Mulder…” she tried.

“It's fine, Scully,” he said, somewhat gruffly. “Although I'm guessing we'll need to go out sooner or later, for food. I don't think it's a good idea to go to another neighbor's house.”

She laughed halfheartedly. “You're right. And we need to get you to the doctor.” 

He considered telling her he was fine, reconsidered. He didn't want to get in another fight. So he didn't say anything instead, scuffed his overlong fingernails over his pants, nodded, staring at the blank TV. 

She was quiet too; maybe she didn't know what to say either. She tipped her head against his shoulder for a second, nestling her soft hair against his chin before she pulled away, squeezed his knee again and got up, trailing into the bathroom. The shower came on in the next few seconds. Mulder sat on the couch and watched the silent black TV. He tried not to think about the bodies, but the woman's eyes kept coming back to him. They seemed as empty and fathomless as the blank screen before him. 

\---

Scully showered and dried her hair before she went out to check the roads. Mulder followed her down there, damp coat flapping around him. “You know, I can drive myself,” he said. “No need to put yourself at risk, or the little boy.” Her head jerked a little in surprise. “Or little girl,” he amended. Scully smiled, smoothing her hand over his abdomen. “Boy? Or girl?” 

“I'm coming with you, Mulder,” she said. “No arguments. Although I do appreciate the concern. The baby does, too.”

“I can't help but notice your studious avoidance of my question.”

They'd reached the road. Scully surveyed it, chewing on her lip. “It looks okay, I guess,” she said finally. “What do you think, Massachusetts?”

He chuckled. “I think it'll be fine. But I'm driving; no arguments.” 

She nudged his shoulder. “Reclaiming your big macho manhood, huh?”

He grinned; he'd almost forgotten that case. “It's evident that your little feet  _ can  _ reach the pedals.”

She giggled, brushing her thumb against his. “I should drive, though,” she said. “If you black out, that'd be worse for both of us.”

He hadn't thought of that. “Maybe you should just stay here,” he said uneasily.

“Don't be ridiculous, Mulder, c’mon.” She curled her thumb around his and motioned him towards the car.

They drove into town precariously, Scully hunched over the wheel in concentration. The town was about a fifteen minute drive; it took them thirty. Scully was trying to breathe easily. In some moment of weakness when they were rounding a curve, Mulder reached out and curled a hand around her stomach, like he could protect the baby. They both breathed a sigh of relief as they rolled into town.

The few small streets of town had a few people mingling around on them, but it still seemed empty. The doctor's clinic was small and nearly empty, with just a sniffly kid playing with the bead maze. Scully was talking to the receptionist. “I'm Dr. Scully, Mr. Mulder's primary physician,” she was saying. “He’s not been feeling well, and I think it might be related to recent trauma he’s suffered. Can I make a phone call to transfer his files here?”

“Phone lines are down,” the receptionist said in a bored tone, barely looking up from her Solitaire. 

Scully blinked in surprise. “What? Will they be fixed soon?”

“Ma'am, the snowstorm disabled all of our phone and cable lines and the mechanic cannot handle the scale of the mess,” the woman snapped irritably, adjusting her glasses. “If you're Mr. Mulder's doctor, why can't you examine him yourself? What's the issue?”

“It's an extensive issue,” Scully said, just as irritably. “And we're on vacation time right now. I don't have the materials I'd need to conduct an exam.”

“Sir?” the receptionist said sharply, and Mulder startled, turning to look at her. “Would you two like me to put you down for a check-up? You could relay the medical history to Dr. Henderson, Dr. Scully.”

Mulder nodded. “That would be good, thank you,” Scully said, traces of annoyance still in her voice. She filled out his form automatically when the receptionist slid it under the window before she motioned him towards the line of hard chairs. “How do you feel now?” she asked, checking his temperature with the back of her hand. “Any dizziness, flashbacks?”

“I'm okay, really,” he said. “The flashbacks only happen when I'm alone.”

Her face softened. “Mulder,” she said softly, reaching for his hand. 

“How are you going to explain all this to the doctors?” he said, changing the subject. Maybe if he could convince her that this was a bad idea, she'd let him leave. “They'll never believe you.”

She squeezed his fingers. Her jaw was clenched again. “I'm worried about you, Mulder. Especially the blacking out.”

“Maybe it wasn't blacking out,” he said. “Maybe it was some kind of…  autopilot. Or maybe… maybe there was something else that forced me to come here.”

The beads on the maze clattered under the little girl's finger. Scully said, “You're in X-Files mode again, Mulder.”

“Well, can you blame me? You have to admit something is off, about this whole thing,” he said. “If I'd really blacked out, we would've crashed; there's no way we would've stayed on the road. And my subconscious wouldn't bring me to Calvert Pass because I'd never heard of it before. The unusual climate, the bodies… they were murdered, Scully, I can feel it, but there wasn't a mark on their bodies. Something is going on here.”

Scully swallowed, not looking at him. “You're looking too far into it, Mulder.” Her hand slipped out of his. “You just got back; you need to rest.”

“You never believe me,” he said quietly, childishly hurt. He wasn't sure what prompted it; she always countered his beliefs, it was their thing. But he felt hurt the way he had the last time they were in North Carolina.  _ I just think I've earned the benefit of the doubt here _ . Fuck, maybe it was the state. Fucking North Carolina; it had taken his leg and his lungs and pulled him down into the ground twice now, almost taken Scully away from him. He hated the state. 

“That's not true,” Scully said softly. Her hands pressed into her thighs. 

“When  _ have _ you believed me?” 

"You don't know,” she said, quietly but fiercely. “You don’t.”

They were saved from having to say more by the opening of the door in the back. Deputy Haswell came out then, scanning the doctor's office until her eyes landed on the little girl. “Haven't called you back yet, Ly?” she asked.

The little girl shook her head, sniffling. “Think I'm next,” she said thickly. “Then these people.” She jabbed a finger at the two of them.

Haswell looked up. “Agents,” she said with some surprise. 

“Deputy Haswell,” Scully said somewhat pleasantly. Her voice shook only a little; she was good at hiding her anger.

“Everything all right?” Haswell didn't sound particularly suspicious, but she was watching them curiously.

Mulder decided to try and explain. “I'm just feeling a little under the weather, and I wanted to come and check it out,” he said, shifting in his seat. “You off-duty so fast?” ( _ I can be a suspicious law enforcement officer, too,  _ he taunted her in his head.)

“We have the morgue in the back and our normal coroner is snowed in. I'm trying to get in touch with a replacement,” Haswell said. “My daughter had a cold so I brought her in to get checked out.”

“Two birds with one stone,” the little girl said cheerfully, clearing repeating something her mother had said. She turned to face them, wiping her nose with the back of her wrist. “I'm Lyla. Who are you?”

“I'm Dana, and this is… Mulder,” Scully said in her Talking To Kids voice. It was suddenly impossible not to notice her extended abdomen. “We're... passing through town.”

Lyla arched an eyebrow. “Actually, they're the FBI agents I told Anna about, sweetie,” Haswell said. “The ones who helped me out this morning?”

“Oh!” She leaned towards Scully in excitement. “Are you gonna have a baby?” she asked in a confidential whisper.

“Mm-hmm,” Scully said lightly. Like the entire statement didn't turn the world on its side. Lyla looked fascinated, staring at her stomach like it was some kind of foreign species.  _ Me too, kid,  _ thought Mulder. 

The door opened and the nurse called Lyla Haswell. In the moment that they were looking away, Mulder turned to look at Scully, a silent question in his eyes. He might’ve been pleading a little. Her expression was unreadable for a second before she closed her eyes and nodded. “Deputy Haswell?”

Haswell turned back towards them, a questioning look on her face. “I'm a pathologist,” Scully said. “I can autopsy the bodies.”

Haswell looked uncertain for a moment; she licked her lips, considering. “I wouldn't want to trouble you.”

Mulder's shoe bumped up against hers. “It wouldn't be any trouble,” Scully said. “Really. I'd be glad to do it right after Mulder sees the doctor.”

Haswell swallowed, nodded, folding her hands in front of her. “That works fine, it gives me a chance to go to my daughter's appointment.”

“Mommy, come  _ on, _ ” Lyla said, tugging her hand. “They're waiting.” Haswell thanked Scully again before walking to the back with her daughter. 

Mulder felt vaguely embarrassed for everything that had happened, their argument before Haswell appeared. “Owe you one, Scully,” he said.

“You don't owe me anything, Mulder,” she mumbled.

It wasn't true; he owed her everything. He was an asshole who didn't deserve her. He wouldn't even have asked her to do the autopsies if it hadn't been for the images behind his eyes. These bodies - these people - that needed his help. He gulped. He wanted to apologize but he didn't know what for.

\---

Scully didn't tell the doctor the whole story and he didn't offer any information of his own. (What was he supposed to say,  _ Hey, doc, so I was buried for three months and now I'm back and plagued with torturous memories, can you help with that? _ ) She just said he'd been having flashbacks to traumatic experiences, blacked out once. She didn't mention the part where he blankly drove them to a town they'd never heard of without fault.

The doctor took a sample for a blood test, and Scully went on to do the autopsies. Mulder waited in the chair beside the exam table. The ship flashed behind his eyelids and he stumbled to the bathroom to splash cold water on his face. There wasn't any pain, this time, but the rush of images was intense. He held his hands under the cold stream of water until they faded and tried to breathe steadily before slinking back to the room.

In the end, the result was the same: perfect health.  _ Just fine and dandy,  _ Mulder wanted to snap.  _ But that doesn't help me any.  _

“Your girlfriend said you'd been through a lot,” the doctor said, hands in his pockets. 

“She's not my girlfriend,” Mulder said, and regretted it instantly. 

Dr. Henderson shifted uncomfortably. “Oh, well… out of curiosity, was it a near death experience?”

_ How the hell did he know?  _ Mulder thought. “Something like that.”

Dr. Henderson pulled out a card and passed it to him. “Dr. Terrence Calvert. He's a NDE counselor in the area. He can help with getting past these experiences, trauma, PTSD.”

He  _ was _ a psychologist, why did the idea of going to one sound terrible? And what town with a population of under a thousand had a near death experience specified psychologist? “NDE counselor, huh,” he said, turning the card over and over in his hand. The edges bit into the pads of his fingers. “Pretty unique thing for such a small town.”

“It attracts a lot of attention, people come from all over the world to talk to Dr. Calvert. His family founded the town, actually,” the doctor said with that same chest-pride people have in their hometown.

“Calvert Pass,” Mulder noted.

“Yes.” Dr. Henderson fidgeted with his name tag. “Your symptoms sound more like PTSD than another health issue. Except for the blackout, but I think that can be attributed to needing more rest. You said you came from Annapolis? You need to rest as much as possible. And I really would consider talking to Dr. Calvert, Mr. Mulder.”

Mulder swallowed, slipping the car in his pocket. “I'll think about it,” he said.

Something seemed off, he noted as he left the back to go to the waiting room. This entire thing seemed to be twisted in a strange way. The town, the weather, the bodies. Haswell’s unusual behavior at the crime scene and again here. It screamed  _ X-File  _ to him, and as pissed as Scully was going to be, he suspected she'd find something that would change her mind in the autopsies. (Not that he wanted her to full-on investigate, not with the baby, but she'd be someone to bounce thoughts off of, at least, it’d be somewhat like old times.) Besides that, he  _ missed _ work, missed the rhythm of theories and stakeouts and hotel rooms and arrests and reports (fucking reports, he'd gone off in the deep end). His life had been the X-Files and now it was the X-Files and Scully. ( _ And the kid,  _ he thought, dangerously.) And he had one but not the other so he might as well try for both.

And outside of all that, he felt some strange connection to the victims. The woman; he'd looked into her blank eyes and seen something familiar. They'd all three been dead, and now he was back and they weren't - he felt like he owed it to them to get them justice. Some small thing he could do. 

He sat down in the waiting room, flipping through magazines he wasn't reading. Elevator music crackled over the speakers. Lyla Haswell lay on the floor coloring, a coat that must’ve been her mom’s draped over her like a blanket. “Are you real sick?” she asked Mulder in a thick voice.

Mulder blinked in surprise. “Yeah, I’m okay,” he told her. He remembered, once again, that he was going to be a father. 

The door opened then and Scully came out. Her expression was unreadable, but she looked at him expectantly. 

“Perfect health,” Mulder said. “Same as in Maryland.”

She breathed a sigh of relief. “It doesn't explain the blackout, but at least you're physically okay,” she said. The other thing went unspoken:  _ emotionally…  _

He pulled the card out. “Doc suggested I see the local counselor.”

“That's not a bad idea, Mulder,” Scully said. “Although we could probably find one closer to home…” 

“A  _ near death experience  _ counselor, specifically,” he said, passing it to her as she drew closer. “Descendant of the town founder.”

She raised an eyebrow as she studied the card. “That's unusual.”

“Definitely.” It was the kind of  _ unusual  _ that was practically their M.O.

“Although…” she added, slowly, licking her lower lip. “It's really not be a bad idea to see him. You've been through a lot, Mulder, and…”

“What about the autopsies?” he interrupted her. It might’ve been rude, but he was building a theory in his mind and the counselor fit in, somehow. 

She looked slightly hurt, but explained without a falter. “Cara and Kyle Roberts, Haswell told me. Both of their hearts were stopped.”

“Stopped? How?”

Scully bit her lip, picking at a cuticle. “That's the thing…” she said uncertainly. “I don't  _ know.  _ There were no signs of poisons or anything else that could induce heart failure. And I don't think it was a heart attack.”

“So you're saying…” 

She sighed, brushing her hands over her trench coat. “I don't  _ know,  _ Mulder. I think… I think their hearts were stopped  _ manually _ somehow. I don't see any signs of natural cause, but none of murder either…”

He shook his head, firmly.

“Mulder? What are you thinking?”

“I have some thoughts,” he told her. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for discussion of death

His thoughts on the deaths were incomplete. The cause of death seemed obvious enough to him - telekinesis, Mulder offered, and Scully got some kind of unreadable look on her face - but the motive was unobvious. They didn't know enough about the victims for Mulder to form a complete theory, it wasn't their case, and Scully looked tired. So after a quick stock-up on groceries, Mulder drove them precariously back to the cabin. “I think we should head out tomorrow,” Scully said. “Try to get to Raleigh. This town gives me the creeps.”

“I don't think that'll be possible,” Mulder said, jabbing a finger towards the sky. It was cloaked with heavy snow clouds, some sort of ominous warning: _you’re not going anywhere_. Scully stared up at the sky grimly and didn’t say a thing.

When they got back to the cabin, Scully started some dinner. Mulder offered to help, but she shook her head silently, dropping noodles methodically into hot water. He had no way of gauging her mood (and couldn't exactly get upset at her on the moody scale, it'd be the pot calling the kettle black), so he let it go. He poked aimlessly around the cabin, wandered upstairs and opened the bedroom and closet doors. There was a stack of newspapers on the floor of one of the closets and he scooped it up to flip through it, sitting on the edge of the bed. The one on top of the stack announced _Tourist Found Dead of Heart Attack._ Heart attack, fall of 2000. Mulder chewed his lower lip, slipped it off of the stack and off to the side.

The phone rang downstairs, shrill even through the walls. They were insanely thin, and Mulder could hear everything that was going on downstairs. “Scully,” Scully said briskly. “Oh, hi, Mom.”

The Calvert Pass Post (annoyingly phonetic name) was thin, only a couple pages thick. The headlines were mostly mundane as he kept flipping until 1998: _Tourist Family Found Dead in Car_.

“I'm in Calvert Pass.” Pause. “It's a small mountain town somewhere in North Carolina. Mulder and I were on our way to Raleigh.” Pause. “He wanted to see the… you know.” Voice trembling, but she was trying to hide it.

Mulder bit down on his lip harder and focused on reading the article. It said the son, who had been driving, had died of sudden heart failure and crashed the car. He put it aside with the other one.

“No, Mom, it’s… I'm fine, really,” Scully said downstairs. “He needs this.” She hesitated before adding, “ _I_ need this. I think you know how much this… means to me. After everything.”

Two more deaths in 1997, and Mulder was pretending he wasn't listening to the conversation, pretending there wasn't an ache building up in his chest.

“Of course I’m thinking about the baby, Mom. Of course… I wouldn't put myself in danger, not now. Not after… Mom, I'm fine.”

Mulder pushed the stack of newspapers into place with the tip of one finger, tried not to listen.

“Really,” Scully said, her voice thick. “I promise. I'll call you tomorrow, we should be back in a couple days.” Pause. “I love you, too, Mom.” Silence through the floorboards. Mulder swallowed, straightening the stack. _I should go check on her,_ he thought.

When he got downstairs, Scully was sitting slumped at the table. “Scully?” he asked, tentatively.

“Dinner should be ready soon, Mulder.” Her voice came out in a tear-roughened rasp, and she wiped her cheeks with her fingers, ducking her head to hide it.

“You okay?” he asked, hand brushing her shoulder.

“I'm fine, Mulder,” she mumbled. She leaned briefly into his palm before getting up and going to the stove.

 _How?_ he wondered, watching her bend over the pot and try not to sniffle. _How do I make things normal?_ Or was this even their normal? He didn't know if they _had_ a normal. He thought about a night during their brief relationship where he'd tried to cook and burned everything and she'd teased him but had tried to eat it (to her credit) before he'd given in and order Chinese. (Neither of them were very good cooks and they teased each other mercilessly about it.) He thought about the night after the second time with Pfaster, the closest she'd ever come to letting him in. He thought about the countless nights in the other's bed, the toothbrush he'd stashed in her bathroom, when she'd invited him to Thanksgiving at her mom's a few days before he was abducted. He wanted to go back to those moments but had no idea how.

“Garlic bread?” she asked softly when his hand grazed the small of her back. She didn't look at him.

He didn't know what else to say. He was at a loss for words, apologies, everything. “Sure,” he said.

They ate dinner in semi-silence because the TV still wasn't working. Mulder asked some questions about the baby. “I have some ultrasound pictures at my apartment,” Scully murmured, trailing her fork through a puddle of marinara.

“I'd love to see them,” he said, meaning it immensely.

Scully pushed the noodles around the plate with her fork. “I have an appointment in a couple weeks. You could… come.”

“I'd love to.” Mulder reached out to touch her hand lightly and she smiled a little, looking down at her plate.

They went to bed pretty soon after - Scully looked exhausted, she was already asleep (deliberately positioned in bed) when he got out of the shower. He crawled in beside her and tried to sleep.

 _Tried_ being the key word. Insomnia had hit him hard and his mind was racing. Scully's breathing was soft and easy, but it didn't provide much comfort. His mind kept wandering back to the room upstairs with the lopsided stack of newspaper articles. He tossed and turned for almost two hours before slipping out from between the covers and padding upstairs to the other bedroom to shuffle through the stacks.

\---

He was in the kitchen of the cabin and he was looking for Scully. It had turned huge, cavernous, and he couldn't get to the other side. _Scully,_ he called. _Scully?_

 _Mulder, the baby,_ she said in a terrified voice.

A hand clamped around his ankle and he looked down in horror. It wasn’t Scully, though; it was the couple from the other cabin. The husband limp over his wife; the woman was looking at him. _Help me,_ she said. _You have to help me._

 _How?_ he asked, desperate. _How do I help you?_

 _You can't,_ the husband said. _You can't even help yourself._

His heartbeat swelled in his ears, blocking out everything like he had wads of cotton stuffed into his ears. It was all he could hear, all he could feel. _Mulder,_ Scully said from behind him. _Mulder?_

His heartbeat grew louder, faster. He tried to say her name, but his lips couldn't move. His throat was closed and the words were trapped. His heartbeat stopped.

Mulder woke up freezing cold with his cheek pressed against the stack of newspaper. He could feel his heart pounding unevenly in his chest. For a split second, he couldn’t remember where he was and reached across the bed for Scully until he remembered; the stacks of newspapers shifted and one slid against his face.

“Shit,” he mumbled, getting to his feet; he hadn't meant to fall asleep up there.  He'd sorted almost all the way through the newspaper stacks and found fifteen deaths related to heart problems in the last sixteen years, ten being out-of-town tourists, two being people new to the town, and the three earliest deaths being longtime residents; he was trying to figure out how to mention it to Scully.

Mulder scrambled to his feet, stumbled down the stairs and into the bedroom. The door hit the wall a little too hard and he winced.

At the sharp sound, Scully stirred. “Mmph,” she murmured, eyes still closed. “Who’sat…” Her hand stretched across the empty mattress.

“It's me,” Mulder whispered, crossing the room quickly. “Go back to sleep.”

To his surprise, she shook her head, confusion coming across her face. “No, you're… you're gone,” she said, shrinking back against the pillow. “You're not here, you're dead… where… where are you?”

The phantom feeling of his still chest from his dream still lingered; was that what it had felt like? He grimaced, reached out to touch her gently. “Scully?” he whispered, fingers flat against her cheek. “You're just dreaming, it's okay. It's me, it's Mulder. I'm not dead, I'm right here.”

She opened her eyes, said, “Mulder?” in a terrified voice, reaching for him. She touched his face first, like she wasn't sure he was real, then curled her hands into his shirt and tugged him to her, burying her face in his neck. His hip hit the edge of the mattress awkwardly, but he wrapped both arms around her. “God, I'm sorry,” she breathed. “I just… I haven't… where were you?”

He held her closer, whispering, “I'm here, I'm here,” into her hair.

“No, I didn't mean…” She gulped against his neck. “Where'd you go, Mulder? Where were you?”

“Upstairs,” he said hollowly, pressing his face into her hair. He could feel the baby kicking between them. “I couldn't sleep and I found… newspaper articles, earlier. A lot of tourist deaths…”

Scully took a shaky breath, some kind of reluctance, but her grip didn't let up. “The people this morning,” she said. “You think they're related.” It wasn't a question.

“Scully, I'm sorry…”

She shook her head, silky hair brushing the underside of his chin.

“Scully?” he whispered.

“It's okay,” she said. “We'll talk about it in the morning. It's okay.”

She sniffled, and he could feel the hot slide of her tears against his collarbone. His chest ached with the weight of it all, and he whispered, “I'm so sorry.”

She didn't let go of his shirt. He expected her to, but she didn't. He crawled onto the bed beside her and covered them with a quilt.

Mulder woke up, later, with Scully curled against him. His hand had found her stomach.

\---

The snow was still there in the morning, with more fluttering down on top of it. It seemed like it would never stop. Scully drank decaf coffee next to him on the couch, their thighs pressed together as he presented her with the evidence. She'd refused to talk about last night when he'd tried to bring it up or ask about the case, but she'd seemed receptive to the case. Whether or not it had to do with the autopsies or just him, he didn't know.

“That is a lot of deaths related to heart failure,” she said, tracing the cursive C in the bold newspaper logos with one finger. “It's an unusual amount for this small town… not impossible, but the pattern is suspicious.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Mulder said.

Scully nodded as if she expected it. “So what's your theory?”

He jumped right into it effortlessly. “I'd have to say that this is the work of some kind of a serial killer. They have some kind of way of inducing heart failure, and there's some connection between the victims.”

“And what's your theory on how heart failure was induced?” Scully asked.“I figured you'd have a few.”

“Sure,” he said. “Telekinesis, maybe. Something similar to the Padgett case, maybe.”

Scully flinched, violently. “There were no marks on the victims, like with Padgett, but Padgett’s victims had their hearts removed. The Roberts’s didn't.” Her jaw was clenched, her voice coming out stiffly, and Mulder remembered her shirt smeared with blood and her sobs against his shoulder and regretted saying anything.

“What about a scientific explanation?” he rushed to change the subject.

“There are plenty of scientific explanations, but none that would explain the unusual amounts outside of coincidence,” she said. “I think we need to figure out if there's a pattern or not before we jump to conclusions. There are ways to induce heart failure without paranormal interference. Poison, for example.”

“Did you find any evidence of those ways in Cara or Kyle Roberts?”

“No.” She sighed, running a finger over the seam of the couch. “But maybe I didn't know what I was looking for.”

“We don't know anything for sure yet,” Mulder said. “All we know is that there's a lot of heart failure in this area, and I call that unusual. Unusual enough to warrant some digging.”

“I think we need to bring someone in on this, and the only one I can think of is Doggett,” Scully said.

Something like jealousy flared up in Mulder. He tried his best to hide it, saying awkwardly, “I don't think we need to do that just yet. I want to talk to Deputy Haswell and see what I can gauge.” He squeezed her shoulder before getting to his feet. “Maybe she'll be willing to help us.”

“Her behavior at the crime scene would suggest otherwise,” Scully called after him as he crossed over to the counter and scooped up her cell phone to call the local police station.

“We'll never know unless we poke the hornet's nest,” he called back, dialing the number.

Haswell was at home that day, apparently, and the secretary gave him her home phone number. She answered her phone in the voice of a woman who had a life outside of work - unlike him.

“Deputy Haswell, this is Agent Mulder,” he said.

“Agent Mulder,” Haswell said, uncertainly. “I hope you're feeling better?”

“I'm fine. I hope your daughter's doing better as well.” He had to search for the name, and tacked on an awkward, “Lyla.”

“She should be fine by tomorrow,” she said. “I'm glad you called, actually… I wanted to thank Agent Scully for essentially closing this case for us. Is she there? Maybe you could thank her for me.”

“Actually, that's the reason I'm calling. Agent Scully and I had some thoughts on the case,” he said. “I found some old newspaper articles… it looks like there's a pattern of heart failure in the area, the same thing that happened to the Roberts’s. Have you noticed an unusual amount of death by heart failure in your time here, Deputy Haswell?”

“You could… say that,” Haswell said awkwardly. “I guess.”

“So you've heard of the other deaths,” Mulder said pointedly.

Haswell paused on the other side. “Yes, I'd seen or heard of other cases of heart failure, but I'd never noticed the pattern until now. I never thought about it before. All of the causes of deaths were natural. Easy open-and-shut cases, the families took the bodies home to bury.”

Mulder picked at a chipped piece of plastic along the edge of the counter with his thumb. “I'd like to discuss the details of this case, if you wouldn't mind.”

“I didn't know the FBI had jurisdiction over natural deaths cases,” Haswell said. “And there's not a _case,_ Agent Mulder.”

He ignored that point. “This could be a potential serial killer, and I have extensive experience in profiling.”

“Serial killer,” Haswell said, matter of fact. “On two cases of heart failure.”

“I know how it sounds, Deputy, but there are ways to stop a heart unnaturally,” he replied, just as matter of fact.

“But there was nothing like that on the autopsy reports.”

“If I'm correct, Agent Scully's autopsy reports left the cause of the heart failure open. And the last death due to heart failure was last fall, months ago, the three before that in 1998. Have you seen the autopsy reports recently?”

“What do you want, Agent Mulder?” Haswell had the voice of someone who was leaning heavily against something and rubbing their temples.

“I just want to explore other options here,” he said. “But it's impossible to do that without information on the other deaths. So I'd appreciate it if I could take a look at the reports on the other deaths, just see what I can find. It doesn't have to interfere with your investigation at all.”

“There _is_ no investigation.”

“So what's the harm in digging into it a little?”

Haswell sighed, heavily. “Fine, Agent Mulder. But I'd suggest talking to me instead of my bosses; they don't like Feds too much.”

“Nobody does,” he said, with some astonishment. He'd expected more fight from her, based on her hesitance towards Scully doing the autopsy. “When do you want to meet?”

Haswell sighed again, wearily. “Today. I can set my kids up with a movie or something, I'll get my colleague to pull the files for you. I'll give you my home address; it's 114 Cornstalk Road.”

“Thanks; I'll be out there in a little bit.” He hung up and dropped the phone on the counter with a clatter, turning to Scully with some small amount of self-satisfaction. “Well, that was easier than expected.”

Scully was watching him solemnly, lips pursed and arms crossed over her chest. Her stomach was impossible to miss; she looked vulnerable, which was something he'd almost never thought about Scully. “Is this really a good idea?” she asked. “Mulder, we don't know anything about this case, it could be dangerous.”

“I think you should probably stay here,” he said. Her stomach was too visible, she was too much of a target, and goddamnit, he wasn't letting her die, or his kid.

“I meant for _you_ ,” Scully said.

Mulder shrugged. “No more dangerous than any other case.”

“Mulder… you _just_ came back from the dead. A few days ago! Not even a week.”

“In perfect health,” he argued stubbornly.

“That doesn't mean you need to be overexerting yourself and running head-first into danger.”

“You agreed to look into it last night,” he said softly.

“I said we'd _talk_ about it. Not insert ourselves into an X-File!”

He stopped, surprised. “You think this is an X-File?”

She flushed. “I think _you_ think it's an X-File. And I don't think it's good for you to be doing this, Mulder. Not so soon after everything that's happened.”

“If I don't do this, no one will,” he hissed. “And that couple will never get justice for their death.” She looked down, didn't say anything. “I need this,” he added, gentler. Maybe she could understand that. “I… need to do this.”

Scully looked up at him, with that look of finality she had when she knew he was going to do something and she couldn't convince him any different. “I'll go with you to Deputy Haswell’s,” she said. “I'll discuss my findings. For now, Mulder… I think that's all I _can_ do.”

“Okay,” he said. He didn't want to agree but he had to. He could still hear her terrified voice in her head: _Mulder, the baby._ He couldn't blame her for not wanting to work on the case. “That's fine, Scully.”

She turned and headed into the bedroom. He thought they'd reached some kind of stalemate last night, some kind of familiar place. But there was still a lot unsaid by the both of them, things he had no idea how to fix.

\---

The roads were almost worse than the day before; Mulder insisted on driving, and Scully didn't bother arguing. The drive was as nerve-racking as the first one, and Scully sat stiffly in the passenger seat, hand pressed to her stomach. “Do you think the baby's scared?” Mulder asked at one point.

“I don't think so,” Scully said softly, voice trembling. “I think the baby's braver than me.”

“You're the bravest person I know, Scully,” he said, knuckles turning white from clutching the wheel. She didn't say anything in return.

Cornstalk Road was a few miles out of town, so it took less time to get there. The road was a tiny dirt one, with houses scattered sporadically. They passed a larger house than they'd seen in the area. A wood fence spanned the front of the yard, and posted on the front fence was a row of scarecrows. They were unusually eerie, their burlap faces curving outward in a beak-like shape where the nose would be, like some kind of plague mask. Mulder watched them out of the corner of his eye as the car passed.

Haswell’s house was little, bundled up at the end of the road. Mulder parked on the edge of the slick driveway and headed towards the porch. Scully's shoes skidded on the snow when she got out of the car, and he immediately turned and threw his arms out to catch her, ashamed he hadn't thought of helping from the beginning. “Thanks,” she muttered, pressing a hand briefly against his arm to steady herself before mounting the steps to the porch.

“Scully, let me…” he started.

“I'm _fine_ ,” she said, fingers tightening over the porch rail as she stepped onto the top. She stabbed the doorbell with one finger, effectively ending the conversation. Mulder went to join her silently.

A wiry preteen opened the door, staring at them suspiciously. “Who are you?” she asked, looking between them as she smoothed her braid between her fingers.

“We're FBI agents,” Mulder said. “We're here to talk to your mom.”

The girl looked between them, yelled, “Mom!” over her shoulder, and stalked off into the house.

Mulder looked at Scully, motioning to her stomach with a nod of his head. “I'm sure you're looking forward to those years.”

“Oh, can't wait,” Scully said dryly. “This kid has your genes, it should be an interesting ride.”

“Agents?” Haswell appeared at the door. “Please come in,” she said. “I'm sorry about Anna, she's at that age, you know…”

Scully shrugged awkwardly, and Mulder didn't say anything. They clustered awkwardly in the threshold, snow and ice coming off of their shoes and melting on the carpet. In the living room, the preteen, Anna, and Lyla sat on the couch with some animated movie that sounded like it had Tom Hanks in it played in the background. Anna stared irritably at the screen; Lyla saw them and waved merrily. Feeling awkward, Mulder waved back.

“Come on into the dining room so we can talk in private,” Haswell was saying. They followed her into the dining room, where the Roberts file was sitting on a stack of other files in the middle of the table. “I looked over your autopsy report, Agent Scully,” she started, drumming her fingers on the file as she sat. “And I saw absolutely no suggestion of foul play.”

“I said that the cause of death was unusual,” Scully said tentatively, sitting in a chair across from her. Mulder sat in the chair beside her. “I was unable to find the cause of the heart failure; there was nothing to indicate natural causes _or_ poison, as I stated clearly in my report.”

“Agent Scully and I are heads of a division that handles unexplained cases,” Mulder explained. “These deaths fits the qualifications.”

Haswell blinked blearily at them. "Unexplained cases,” she repeated, dumbfounded. She looked like someone whose defenses were down and who did not want to be discussing police work at the moment. (Scully got the same look on her face on Saturdays; she’d shot it to him across many diner tables over breakfast.) “In… what sense?”

“A… paranormal sense,” said Scully awkwardly.

Haswell took a long drink of coffee, looking between them warily. “And what makes you suspect that this case is… paranormal?”

Mulder searched for some sort of concrete evidence and realized he had none; outside of the cause of death and the patterns, there was nothing much substantial - at least for him - to suggest the supernatural. Except for the… feeling he had. Gut feeling, intuition, whatever. “The patterns and unusual cause of death…” he began, clumsily.

Scully jumped in (though whether it was to his rescue or demise, he didn't know). “This case ebbs more on the ‘unexplained’ side of the X-Files. But we suspect foul play, and we'd like to carry out our hunch and see if we find anything. All for the sake of the victims, of course.”

“Yes,” Mulder added. “That can’t hurt anything, can it? Just to see if there’s a connection?”

Haswell looked between them, sighed, and pushed the stack of files towards them with one finger. “My friend pulled all the files on the deaths by heart failure in the area,” she said. “You seem pretty determined, so here. I can help you look through the files for connections, if you want. I'm interested in your theory, whatever it is; I want to see what you come up with.”

Scully looked bemused. “Most aren't.”

“Most are more skeptical,” Mulder added. “Agent Scully was, at first.”

Haswell shrugged. “This is intriguing. I've never seen someone work so hard to convince me that heart failure was a murder.” She chuckled a little, poked at the pile with her long fingernails, dividing them into three piles.

Scully was watching them both warily. Especially Haswell. “What's with the change of mind?” she asked.

Haswell slid a stack towards Mulder. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, five minutes ago you were convinced these people died on natural causes. And now you want to help us investigate them as murders? In my experience, people don't change their mind like that, not this quickly.”

Haswell wasn't looking at them, shuffling through the piles. “I didn't say I changed my mind,” she said lightly, but tensely. “I want to see if you come up with anything. I want you to convince me this is a murder. I'm curious. And I didn’t say I’d help you investigate; I said I’d look through the files with you. Nothing more than that.”

Scully was looking at her suspiciously, but she nodded and grabbed her own pile. “Fine,” she said, somewhat curtly. “Let's start looking, I guess.”

Mulder flipped open the top of the Roberts file. The pictures of the crime scene was on the top, prone bodies on the kitchen floor. He swallowed back nausea and slid the picture to the side, focusing on the papers behind it.

\---

An hour and a half later, the three of them compared notes.

The heart failures seemed mundane enough - two of the victims had preexisting heart conditions, and one even had experienced a recent heart attack. But at least ten of the victims were young, healthy; not in a condition to have sudden heart failure. And there were multiple victims in some cases - outside of the Roberts’s, a purported health nut couple in their forties - the Hendricks - were both found dead from heart failure, and a family of three - the Youngs - found dead in the car accident from the son’s heart failure. Definitely unusual - the statistics seemed almost impossible. And then there was the fact that almost all of them were tourists. And then there was the one, glaring fact.

“Most of them of the victims had attended at least one appointment with Dr. Calvert,” Mulder said. “The NDE counselor.”

Scully looked slightly amazed, flipping through the notes. “How many?”

“Including the Roberts? Fourteen of them,” Mulder said. “The first three deaths didn’t, but all of the non-longtime residents and tourists did. At least one of the family members in the families found dead had an appointment. The Youngs’s seventeen-year-old son, both of the Hendricks’s, and Cara Roberts.”

“That’s a substantial connection, at least between the tourist deaths,” Scully muttered, flipping through the pages. “When did Calvert start his practice?”

“‘87,” Haswell said.

“So right around the first tourist murder,” Mulder noted, tapping the dates on the papers.

Haswell stared at the yellow notepads with some kind of muted amazement. “Calvert’s the link,” she said softly. “How could I never have noticed it before? Fourteen victims with a clear connection, and after all these years…”

She looked so ashamed that Mulder tried to offer some comfort. “You couldn't have seen all the deaths,” he said. “They've been happening since 1985, and there’s no visible connection between the first three victims and the other fourteen besides the cause of death. How long have you been a cop?”

“Only eight years, but still, that's eight of the deaths.” Haswell picked at a piece of nail polish remover on the table, head down. “And I've lived here all my life…how could I not connect these deaths earlier?” She sounded almost on the verge of tears; thick voice trembling like a reed in the wind.

“Mari,” Scully said, gently. “How well do you know Dr. Calvert?”

Haswell sniffled once, sighed heavily as she regained composure. “As well as you can know anyone in this small town,” she said. “I know almost everyone in town personally, but Calvert doesn't make personal connections. He doesn't usually come to church - the real devout Christians don't like him because they think he's an atheist, takes an un-Christian approach to his counseling. But that's part of why he's so popular, because not everyone who comes in is Christian. He keeps to himself, sponsors events sometimes. Acts nice enough, I guess.”

“He's creepy,” one of the girls said from the door. The bigger one, Anna.

“Anna Haswell, what have I told you about listening in?” Haswell asked sternly. Mulder looked down at Scully's stomach consciously - he'd almost forgotten about the baby, but Haswell’s overt motherhood reminded him. He tried to picture Scully taking that stern persona with a kid and found it wasn't too far off. That was probably the most surprising, that he could easily picture her as a mother. She’d always seemed so natural with the kids they met in the X-Files, with Emily; she would be a good mother.

Anna shrugged. “Ly wants more chips. And the movie's over. And Calvert is _super_ creepy,” she added, addressing Mulder and Scully. “He could totally kill someone.”

“ _Anna_ ,” Haswell chided.

“Why do you think he's creepy?” Mulder asked.

“Just is. He looks like a serial killer, or, like, a fairy tale monster; that’s what Lyla says.” Her eyes were lit up in the way that kids’ eyes usually are when they’re telling a ghost story. “The kids at school tell stories about him all the time… dare each other to go knock down one of his scarecrows or ring his doorbell and run away.”

“Anna!”

“Not that _I_ have,” Anna added quickly. “But… they say if he catches you, you never leave. He'll trap your soul in the house with the souls of his patients and you'll be a spirit forever.”

Mulder was fascinated and about to ask her more questions when Haswell shoved a bag of orange popcorn at her daughter. “Here, eat this,” she said. “Put on another movie, and neither of you come back here. You know the rules about my work.”

“ _Yes_ , Mom,” Anna groaned, rolling her eyes in Mulder and Scully's direction, like they would sympathize with her plight. Scully was amused, clearly, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“I think we could be onto something with this Calvert thing,” Haswell told them when Anna was gone. “It’s at least worth looking into.”

“I do, too,” Scully said, hand over her stomach. “The cause of death is shaky, but the connection with all the victims is enough to cause some suspicion, something to investigate. Maybe Calvert uses some undetectable poison that stops the heart, something I’ve never heard of or wouldn’t know how to look for..”

Mulder was thinking about what the kid had said. “Is there any truth to Anna’s claims?” he asked.

Haswell shook her head in an almost frantic matter, bangs flopping over her eyes. “It's just a kid's story,” she said, reaching for her cell phone. “I'm gonna call Jeff and see what he can do to help.” She paced into the other room with her cell phone tucked under her ear, long hair swinging behind her.

Mulder turned to Scully, fingers tapping absently on the table, and said, “I want to talk to the kids, see if they know anything about Calvert.”

“Mulder, you don't really _believe_ those stories, do you?” Scully asked, her eyebrows raised.

“Scully, you yourself said this case was unexplained.”

“I said the cause of death was unexplained. And to be quite honest, Mulder, I'd be open to the suggestion that some kind of telekinesis is responsible, and Calvert is a normal serial killer with paranormal methods. But trapped souls and scarecrows? It seems way off base.”

“More off base than telekinesis?” he retorted. “Look, the Dana Scully I knew would've never believed any of this, much less admitted telekinesis as a possibility.”

Her jaw clenched and she looked at the tabletop. He suddenly remembered what she'd said when he'd accused her of not believing him: _You don't know._ Maybe he didn't.

Mulder looked down at the table, too. As usual, he had no idea what to say. “I just have a feeling,” he said stubbornly.

Scully picked at a chunk of sparkly nail polish on the table. “You always do,” she mumbled.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for discussion of death, general eerieness, references to mulder’s abduction. the goosebumps book that anna references is the scarecrow walks at midnight, one of my childhood favorites.

They ended up eating lunch at Haswell’s while they waited for her coworker to show up: sandwiches and soup. Haswell and Scully did that thing girls did where they bonded easily and chatted about things that weren't probable murders - impending motherhood, for example. (Or maybe it wasn't just girls, maybe it was normal people in general.) Haswell asked how far along Scully was, and Scully said, “Eight months,” and Haswell said, “Oh, in the long stretch, huh,” and Scully said, “Seems like it.” Haswell cast a few looks over at Mulder like she was expecting him to comment or confirm fatherhood. Mulder didn't say much, just ate his soup.

The little one, Lyla, slurped her soup and grinned at them through orange-red tomato-stained teeth. She asked a lot of questions about the FBI - namely what it was and if it was cooler than her mom's job. Anna didn't say much of anything either, just shuffled her soup through the spoon grumpily. It was probably one of the more bizarre meals of Mulder's lifetime - and it was, he realized, very likely his future, considering the possibility that Scully didn't get pissed off and kick him out. (The more he fucked up, the more likely it seemed.)

Haswell’s coworker showed up after lunch, letting himself in with his own key. (Mulder wondered if this meant that his and Scully's key-sharing practice was normal.) “Uncle Jeff!” Lyla squealed, running to hug him around the legs. 

“Hey, kiddo,” the man said, tousling her hair. “Think your mom and me need to do work stuff right now, okay?”

The kid pouted, slinking off into the living room. Anna followed, offering a brief fist bump to the guy as she went. “Uncle Jeff” came around the table and offered a hug to Haswell. “These your FBI agents, Mari?” he asked, tousling her hair.

He seemed to have an easy repertoire with Haswell, a close relationship, but in the moment it looked kind of one-sided: she shrugged him off and motioned towards the other people in the room. “This is Agent Scully and Agent Mulder,” she said. “The federal agents and witnesses from yesterday… they have some insight on the case.”

“Jeff Renner,” the guy said faux-politely, offering his hand. Mulder and Scully took turns shaking it. “So, y'all gonna explain why I had to pull a bunch of files on heart attacks?” he said like he was joking, grinning at Haswell like Scully and Mulder weren't there.

“Heart  _ failure, _ ” Scully said pointedly, crossing her arms. (Forever a pathologist, Mulder thought.)

“Yeah, right, sure,” Jeff said, uncertain. “So what's the deal, Mar? This seems pretty run-of-the-mill.”

"I'll let them explain it,” said Haswell. “They'll do a better job than I will.”

So they took turns explaining the entire thing to Jeff, who watched them quietly, hand smoothing over his beard. Mulder managed to hold back most of his paranormal suspicions, outside of explaining the X-Files, and let Scully do most of the talking (for once). He thought Scully could convince anyone of anything. Still, by the end of it, Jeff was shaking his head. “Calvert? You gotta be kidding me, Mari,” he said. 

“We know virtually nothing about him,” Haswell said, running her fingers through her hair. “And he's the only link between the victims, at least the tourist victims, besides the cause of death.”

“ _ Victims _ ? Mari, this is heart atta-  _ failures,  _ pardon me.” (Scully looked like she wanted to kill him in that moment, and Mulder wouldn’t have blamed her.) “These are not murders!”

“The amount of victims by heart failure is statistically improbable,” Scully started, voice teeming with annoyance, at the same time Mulder said, “Even if some of the deaths can be explained, most cannot, especially when you consider the health of some of the victims.”

“I don't care,” Jeff said, firm. He turned to Mari, his backs to them. “I've known Calvert forever - Mari, we both have. You know he didn't do this, and so do I. No offense,” he added, towards Scully and Mulder, looking briefly over his shoulder, “but just because two big-shot FBI agents come in here and start telling me things doesn't mean I have to listen.”

Scully looked annoyed. Mulder was used to it after all these years but the prickle of irritation never completely went away. “Jeff, you have to see the connection,” Haswell said quietly. 

“There is  _ nothing here _ .” Jeff folded his arms over his chest, as if everything was final. He stalked towards the living room. “I'm gonna go say hi to the girls.” And that was that, it seemed. 

Haswell collapsed in her seat, looking defeated. “That,” Mulder said, “is the kind of reaction I expect from most.”

Haswell laughed bitterly. “I'll… I'll figure something out here,” she said. “I am not letting this go uninvestigated. I really think you could be onto something here.”

“We'll head back to the cabin for now,” Scully said. “You have my cell number if you find anything?”

“Yeah.” She had deflated completely like a parade balloon, chin sagging forward on her arms. “Thank you for your help, Agents.”

Lyla sing-songed a goodbye to them from the living room, and Scully smiled tenderly back at her. The smile faded when she saw the snow fluttering down from the gray-cloaked sky. “Shit,” she muttered. “I was really hoping to get out of here tonight.”

Genuinely astonished, Mulder turned to her in amazement. “I thought we were on the cusp of something here,” he said. “I thought we'd stay until it was finished.”

“And I thought that Haswell could handle it from here, or maybe we could send Doggett in.” Scully ignored his hand, extended to help her to the car, and shuffled through the snow on her own. “Mulder, aside from the fact that neither of us are in crime fighting condition… you fit the MO for the victims.” She lowered her voice for the last part as they climbed into the car. 

“What do you mean?” Mulder asked, almost scoffing, as he turned the key in the ignition.

“All of the victims had an appointment with Calvert, which indicates that all of the victims had a near death experience,” Scully said. “And, Mulder…”

“Scully, I wasn't  _ near _ dead, I  _ was _ dead,” he said, maybe a little harshly. 

“Still, it's not far off, Mulder, and it scares me. I'm not entirely sure we can trust Haswell.”

“What makes you think we can't trust Haswell?” Mulder snapped. 

“Did you see how she was acting? Mulder, she clearly knows something; she went from ‘these aren't murders’ to ‘Calvert did it’ in all of five minutes! This could easily be a trap.”

Mulder was silent; he didn't have a good retort. Scully was right, Haswell didn't ooze trustworthiness, but she was willing to help them. She'd given them information. Her daughter had suspicions about Calvert. It was a lead, at the very least.

“Just… forget about it.” Scully's small hand brushed his arm. “Please? For now? I'll send Doggett up here as soon as we get back, I promise.”

There were a lot of things Mulder was planning on doing in the back of his mind, but forgetting this case was not one of them. ( _ Scully should know that,  _ he thought, hurt.) But he nodded and Scully seemed satisfied with that.

\---

Mari Haswell sat slumped at her kitchen table even after the agents had left. The files lay in front of her like a scattered, dead thing. Now, she thought, the vultures would come to roost. There was no stopping the inevitable.

Jeff came up behind her, his stupid black shoes creaking on the floorboards. The house was ancient, god, she needed to repair it. Every time the girls went down for water in the middle of the night, she got panicked about burglars or worse. And there was worse; she'd seen it. 

Jeff’s heavy hand came down on Haswell’s shoulder and she shivered. Normally she liked Jeff; the girls adored him, always had. Today, she wasn't sure. She was never sure of herself when things like this happened. 

“You know we can't do this,” he said, quietly. “You should've sent them away, Mari. Bad things are going to happen now; you know that.”

She knew. In the moment, she said nothing; there was nothing to say. 

\---

Scully headed for the bedroom when they got home, saying something about a nap and how she hoped the goddamn snow would stop by the time she woke up. She didn't indicate whether or not she wanted Mulder to join her, and Mulder didn't push it; he had plans. As soon as she was most likely asleep, he pulled the card from yesterday out of his jacket pocket and called the number. 

He'd expected some receptionist, but he got a man with a thick Southern accent who said, “This is Dr. Terrence Calvert,” with a great deal of dignity.

“Dr. Calvert,” Mulder said, leaning against the counter. “This is Fox Mulder, I'm a tourist in the area.” He hoped his resurrection hadn't made the news. It was the type of thing he’d be all over if it popped up in his news feed, if it wasn’t him who’d experienced it. “I know I don't have an appointment, but I heard about your practice and I thought it could… help me.”

“Oh,” Calvert said good-naturedly. “So you've had a recent near death experience, Mr. Mulder?” 

He did not want to talk about this. He swallowed hard and said, “Yes.”

“Well, then. I think I can fit you in this afternoon. Does four o'clock work for you?”

“Yes,” Mulder said again, pressing his forehead into the wood of the cabinet.  _ You can do this _ , he told himself. Justice for the victim, it had always been about getting justice for the victim. If he could get a little bit of justice for the Roberts, he thought he'd be okay.

Calvert sounded happy about the appointment; it could've been because of money or an unavoidable need to help others, or because he was a serial killer who preyed on his patients. Mulder didn't think he was in danger, though, not yet; all of the victims had left their appointments alive. He scribbled a note to Scully saying that he was running to the store and grabbed the keys off the counter, tromping through the snow to the car.

Snow made everything quieter, he'd told his mother once as a kid, and it was still true. The mountaintop was almost silent, white trailing eerily from the sky. The row of scarecrows outside Calvert’s house were dusted with snowflakes when Mulder climbed out of the car. For a second, he thought their blank button eyes were following him, but it seemed too fantastic (even by his standards).  _ It's too  _ Scooby-Doo _ ,  _ he thought. (And then, absurdly enough, he wondered if the kid would like  _ Scooby-Doo. _ )

Calvert, by all standards, looked pleasant: a homey-looking man with a beard. He motioned Mulder in and offered him a cup of tea. “I'd normally ask for more information before seeing someone, but in cases like these it can be drastic,” he said. 

_ Eagerness noted _ , thought Mulder. “Right, well, it's appreciated,” he said awkwardly, hands in his pockets. “It's been hard.”  _ Lay it on thick,  _ he instructed himself firmly, even though part of him knew it wasn't a lie. It  _ had _ been hard.

“Of course. Near death experiences are life changing events, and not always for the positive.” Calvert gestured Mulder towards a couch and sat in a chair across from him. “I get all kinds of patients who have all kinds of things they want to work on. I try to help them all.”

“I'm sure,” Mulder said. “You must get a lot of people… lot of walks of life.” He was reaching, but he hoped Calvert wouldn’t notice.

“Mmm,” Calvert replied mildly. “You could put it that way.”

Mulder tried again: “So, what kinds of people usually come to see you?”

“Oh, all kinds,” Calvert said. “Let's stay focused on you, Fox.”

“It's Mulder,” he said, jaw clenched.

“My apologies, Mulder. It's just that it seems to me like you're stalling, putting off confronting your feelings about this trauma you've been through. And while that's understandable, you also need to face that fear or else you'll never be able to move past it.”

Mulder fidgeted awkwardly on the couch.  _ You're a murderer,  _ he thought,  _ how the hell can you help me? _

“We can ease into it, Mulder,” Calvert said comfortingly. “Would you like to start at the beginning?”

_ No,  _ Mulder thought. “Like… recount my death to you?”

“I think it would help.”

Fuck, he hadn't come up with a cover story and he didn't feel like explaining the whole abduction-alien-virus-buried-for-three-months thing. “I'm in the FBI,” he started uneasily.  _ I will catch you, you fuck. It's a federal crime to mess with me or Scully and you'd better fucking keep that in mind. _ “Cases can be… dangerous.”

Calvert nodded, scribbling on his pad. “I'm sure.”

“I was… kidnapped,” he added awkwardly. His knee was bouncing. “By a drug ring,” he lied. “They kept me for three months, as leverage. They… tortured me.”

( _ slice of the blade the smell of blood is overwhelming the other abductees are screaming too _ )

Calvert’s pen scratched over the paper. “I know that must've been hard, Mr. Mulder. Do you want to talk about it?”

( _ drills in his teeth on the roof of his mouth and it hurts Scully Scully help _ )

“No,” Mulder said hoarsely. “It's, uh… it's all a blur, I can't remember.”

( _ he can hear her calling for him in the desert and he calls back but she can't hear and her voice is fading as she walks away _ )

“Okay, Mulder, that's fine.” Calvert’s voice was soothing. He'd read somewhere that serial killers voices were usually soothing; he remembered Pfaster and shuddered. “Would you like to talk about your death?”

He couldn't remember his death; it all softened into a rapid blur of senses and then blackness and then Scully saying his name as he struggled to the surface. “They were interrogating me,” he lied.  _ Enough to get information, just enough to stay in the house.  _ “Waterboarding. I… drowned. My partner found me and resuscitated me.” As he said it he could almost see it: some cold, wet warehouse floor, him not breathing, Scully hunched over him in her usual grim, frantic determination that just barely warded off grief, her small hands pumping his chest. If she’d tried to revive him when she'd found him dead in Montana, it hadn't worked. She couldn't save him for the first time. He was just as surprised as she must've been; Scully was always able to save him.

“And when you were dead, what did you see?” Calvert asked.

“Nothing,” said Mulder, shifting again; he couldn't seem to get comfortable. “Nothing I can remember. It's not… like that, that's not the problem. I can't seem to get past the time I spent in captivity. Or my death.” It was like an insurmountable wall, he'd been trying to climb it for days now with no luck. He swallowed, tried to continue. “I've had… flashbacks. To my time as a captive.”

Calvert stopped writing, setting his pen on top of his notepad. “That's very understandable, Mulder. Trauma like that tends to stay with a person.” He folded his hands in his lap. Mulder stared at the callused knuckles and thought about the likelihood that Calvert was a murderer. “Discussing it can sometimes be therapeutic,” he added softly, encouragingly. 

\---

Mulder talked for the better part of an hour, his voice running on and on like a smooth motor, telling as much of the truth as he could. He caught himself a few times, reminding himself that he was talking to a suspect. Which is why he tried to avoid lingering over Scully, mentioning her as little as possible. But he couldn't stop himself from spilling everything to Calvert; fucked up as it was, the man was right, talking about it seemed to help. He was honestly startled when the end of the appointment came. 

Calvert honestly didn't seem very suspicious by the end of the appointment; but then again, maybe he was just trying not to be. Still, he didn't ask about where Mulder was from or who he had up here with him or why he was here. And Mulder didn't offer that information. At the end of the appointment, he did say, “I assume you're staying in the cabins right outside of town?”

_ Scully,  _ Mulder thought. “No, we're staying with family members.”

“Hmm.” Calvert closed his notepad. “Do you plan on a follow up appointment?”

“Yeah, we'll be probably be here a while unless this snow lets up,” Mulder said easily, trying to make his tense shoulders relax. “This kind of weather normal for April?”

“Normal enough, I suppose,” Calvert said. “I don't get many visitors… do you think the day after next would be a good time for another appointment?”

Mulder shrugged and Calvert jotted it down. He wanted to get out of here, was slightly horrified that he'd talked so much. He draped his jacket over his arm as he stood. “Hey,” he said.  _ Casual, be casual, you've been undercover before goddamnit.  _ “My… aunt told me there'd been recent deaths in the area… two tourists, married couple. You know anything about that?”

“No,” Calvert said, nonchalant. “I'm afraid I don’t.”

“She said it’s pretty normal,” Mulder adding, his voice sharpening slightly.  _ I'm an FBI agent, you fuck; I know you counseled the victims.  _ “Tourist deaths, that is. Town this small, you don't find it unusual? That so many tourists die.”

“I suppose so.” Calvert checked his watch, an escape as unsubtle as Mulder's questions. “If you'll excuse me, Mulder, our hour is up and I'd like to get to dinner.”

“Of course,” Mulder said, trying to be amicable. He stalked out of the room, biting his lip so he wouldn't say more. 

The house was about as dark as you'd expect a Hollywood serial killer's house to be. Shadowy fucking hallways. Mulder took a wrong turn at the place where he could go out to the cheery home waiting room Calvert had built into his house. (It even had a damn fish tank, like a dentist's office.) He went further into the house instead, heart thudding as he tried not to make any noise. 

Near a staircase was a table with a leather bound book lying open. Mulder drew closer, half holding his breath, and bent over the pulpy pages. Pinned to the top was a picture of the victims. Cara and Kyle Roberts. They were alive and happy; he was kissing her cheek with his arm around her and she was laughing into the camera.

Under the photo was a scrawl of quick information:  _ wife died from accidental electrocution, husband brought her back. From Kansas City, no children. Wife experienced an out of body trip “to the sky”.  _

He flipped further back in the book, pages thick between his fingers. A picture of the second victim, Layla Tanner, was pinned to the second page:  _ drowned, from Milwaukee, wife back home. Says she talked to God.  _ A picture of the three Youngs in snow suits and ski poles:  _ son was sick and flatlined, paramedics brought him back miraculously. Didn't see anything. From Atlanta. Parents protective, unlikely to leave him alone.  _ The two victims from 1997 -  _ shot, revived by paramedics, saw red light and heard maniacal laughter; flatlined during surgery, heard nothing.  _ The Hendricks -  _ shared near death experience, saw each other in described heaven.  _ All of the victims lay out in this book, a grisly game of show-and-tell. Mulder held his breath.

“Mr. Mulder,” someone said from behind him. He jolted, book tumbling to the ground. Calvert was standing behind him, and he didn't look particularly happy. “Door's that way,” he said, pointing over his shoulder.

“Of… of course,” Mulder said. His heart was still pounding, palms slick with sweat. He brushed past Calvert without  word, jaw clenched in some kind of fury. He'd wanted to take the book but he definitely couldn’t get away with that, not with Calvert right there.  _ Next appointment,  _ he thought firmly.

He didn't go back to the cabin, at first; he went to Haswell’s house. He figured she'd be more willing to help than Scully, at the moment. Haswell looked surprised when she opened the door, like she hadn't expected him to come back. “Agent Mulder,” she said with some surprise. 

“I went to Calvert’s,” he said in lieu of a greeting. “I made an appointment with him pretending to be a patient.”

Haswell blinked. “That… actually does not surprise me,” she said. “You don't seem like the type of person to give up easily.”

“I’m not giving up on this just because your partner said there’s nothing there,” he said. “No offense.”

She sighed, leaning heavily against the door frame. “Jeff’s a piece of work sometimes,” she said. “Did you find anything?”

“Something along those lines,” Mulder said. “He didn’t seem too suspicious… more interested in my NDE than in my personal information; the only personal thing he asked was where I was staying. I lied and said with family.”

Haswell raised an eyebrow. “Come in, Agent Mulder; you’re letting out all the heat.”

“Just Mulder is fine,” he said, stepping inside. Snow from his shoes shook loose on the carpet. “I found a book in Calvert’s house, though,” he added. “It had the victims in it; the Roberts’ and Layla Tanner and the Youngs… it had information about their deaths and pictures, personal pictures. I wasn’t able to get a good look at it, I don’t know if all of them were in there. I tried to get ahold of it but Calvert caught me.”

“That’s something, but it’s not much,” Haswell said. “It could just be his patient notes; that’s what anyone would say if we went after him with it. We’ll need more evidence.”

“I have another appointment in two days,” Mulder said. “I can look for more evidence then.”

A little head poked around the doorframe to the kitchen. Mulder raised his eyebrows at her. “Lyla, go back and eat your dinner,” Haswell said without turning around, and Lyla scrambled away from the door and across the kitchen floor. “You didn't happen to see Anna on your way in, did you?” she addressed Mulder. “I've called her for dinner five times now.”

“No, sorry,” he said.

She looked annoyed, but went back to the subject at hand. “We need a plan,” she told him. “Some way to definitively prove that Calvert is involved. The first three victims are buried here; do you think you could get Agent Scully to do an exam if they were exhumed?”

He tried not to shudder. “I can try,” he said. “I don’t want anything to happen to her, though. I don’t want to put her in any danger.”

Haswell nodded like she understood. “I’ll make sure she’s protected,” she said. “Nothing will happen to her or the baby.”

He gulped. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, I’ll talk to her, see what she says. I’ll call you again and let you know, but I’ll leave now and let you finish dinner.”

“Thank you,” Haswell said, not without humor. Mulder offered some sort of smile before turning towards the door to leave.

“Agent Mulder?” He turned to face her. Her hand was clenched around the railing. “Have you had an NDE recently?”

“No,” he lied. “Just a lie for Calvert.”

She nodded. “Look, whether Calvert is the killer or not… you should be careful,” she said. “There’s a pattern, and you’ve just inserted yourself into it, FBI agent or not.”

“I’m being careful,” he told her. “I’ve done things like this before… made myself a target.” 

“Okay,” said Haswell. “I’m just saying… my husband passed away when Lyla was a baby. I know what it’s like to raise a baby without another parent, and it’s not easy.”

His fingers clenched hard and awkward around the doorknob. “How did you know?” he asked, uncertain. 

“I could just tell,” she said. “There was no good explanation of why you and Scully were here together if you weren’t on a case, and you both seemed very protective of each other.” 

_ That’s one way to put it, _ he thought.

“I’ll be careful,” he said, because there was no other choice. He wasn’t going to die again. He nodded at her before opening the door and leaving the house.

“Hey, FBI guy.” Mulder turned towards the voice and found Anna Haswell standing in the front yard bundled up in a coat. She was staring at him solemnly. “You believe in, like, ghosts and shit, right?”

“Something like that,” Mulder said, amused.

“Okay.” She bunched her mittened hands together, scarf blowing in the wind. “Okay, so you should know about the scarecrows.”

He blinked. “The… scarecrows?” he repeated, casting his eyes down the road towards Calvert’s house, the row of scarecrows on his front fence.

“I know it sounds like that one  _ Goosebumps  _ book, but I swear, it’s true,” Anna said in a frantic whisper. “I’ve  _ seen  _ them move. Walk around and shit.”

“You’ve seen them?” Mulder turned to look back at her, raising his eyebrows in a question.

The girl nodded briskly. “I’d be careful,” she said in a low voice. “If I were you.”

\---

It had seemed, at the time, like a good idea to sneak off during Scully’s nap, but his stomach thunked when he realized the repercussions. How bad he must’ve scared her. 

It was still snowing when he finally pulled up at the cabin, the white coating everything. Mulder tried not to slip as he went over the stone path and cursed the unusual weather. It was dark inside, and he hoped briefly that Scully was still asleep as the door swung open. 

“You went to see Calvert, didn’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

Mulder fumbled for the light switch, turning it on. Scully was sitting on the couch and staring at the darkened TV screen. “Scully…” he started.

“I could’ve given you about twenty reasons as to why that was a bad idea,” she said, still not looking at him. “But who knows if you would’ve listened.”

That was irritating; he took a sharp breath and rounded the couch to face her. “Scully, listen. I lied to him about what happened to me, I told him I was staying with family, and I didn’t tell him you were here with me. I think I’m onto something; I found a book in his house that has pictures and information about the victims in it. Haswell said…”

“If you really wanted to keep investigating this case - which I’ve made clear I think is a bad idea - the least you could’ve done is have the goddamn decency to tell me where you were going,” she hissed, getting to her feet. “You left me a fucking note saying you were going to the store and weren’t back for hours; do you have any idea what finding that note was like? I am your  _ partner _ , Mulder, and if you insist on digging into this, we need to work together.”

“I didn’t tell you because I knew you wouldn’t like the idea,” he muttered. By the look on her face, he could tell that was the wrong thing to say. 

“You’re right, I wouldn’t have, and this is exactly why. You put yourself in danger! You could’ve blacked out on the way over there and crashed the car, for one thing, and more importantly, you practically made yourself a target, if your theory is correct. Mulder, he could’ve  _ poisoned  _ you, you could be dying right now.”

“He didn’t poison me,” Mulder said matter-of-factly. “He couldn’t have, I didn’t touch him or eat or drink anything.”

“You don’t know how he does it; he could have coated the fucking couch you sat on with it.” Scully was tense, hands curling into fists by her side. “And that’s not the goddamn point, Mulder.”

“Well, what is it?” he snapped. “What  _ is  _ the goddamn point, Scully? I’ve been hurt a hundred times before and I’ve still investigated cases! Hell, you were pissed that you couldn’t work in the field after you went into the field! You kept working cases when you were  _ dying _ , Scully, and I am in perfect health.”

“This is different,” she whispered, furious.

“How? How is it so different? I was worried about you, Scully; I was watching you die every damn day and you wouldn’t slow down! Do you know how many days I was worried were going to be your last? Do you know the cases I let slide by because I didn’t want to put too much strain on you? And god  _ forbid _ I express my concerns, because the untouchable Dana Scully can’t let anyone take care of her. It doesn’t matter what anyone else is thinking or feeling…”  

“This is fucking  _ different _ ,” she shouted. Mulder was momentarily silenced and so she kept going, barreling through him like a freight train. “You watched me die, Mulder? I buried you. I was in love with you, and I  _ buried  _ you. I watched you go into the goddamn ground. I found you cold and stiff in a field and I knew there was  _ nothing  _ I could do to bring you back.”

Mulder swallowed against the building lump in his throat. “Scully…” he tried. 

“You want to know what it was like? I found out you’d been abducted about twenty minutes after I found out I was pregnant, and all I could think about is that I had to find you. I ran all over the goddamn country to try and find you. I wouldn’t let them have the X-Files because I thought if I did that they wouldn’t let me find you.” She laughed bitterly, wiping under her eyes. “Doggett was a good partner but he wasn’t exactly… open to the paranormal cases that the X-Files deal with, so I tried to goddamn fill your place and offer up those theories you always come up with. I almost fucking died in the Utah desert because a cult shoved a fucking slug they worshipped up my back. I ended up in the hospital because I thought they’d done something to my baby, that it wasn’t… human.” She swallowed hard. Mulder could feel his hands shaking; he shoved them in his pockets. He wanted to hug her more than ever. “I tried so hard to be you, to fill your empty space, Mulder… and it wasn’t enough. You still died. I couldn’t save you. I buried you and I tried to move on… do you even know how hard that was? Do you know how many nights I spent in your bed? I couldn’t leave your apartment and I fed your goddamn fish and I prayed for a goddamn miracle every night. And I got it.” 

He was crying. He realized that in the moment, and he said her name again, softly. 

Scully looked down at her shoes. A tear hit the rug. “I can’t expect you to be anything other than yourself,” she mumbled. “God, I wouldn’t  _ want  _ that. But, Mulder… you just got back. And I am not burying you again.”

The words made his stomach clench, made him feel sick. “I know,” he said softly. “But… I have to do this.” 

(There was something inside him who wouldn’t let the damn thing go. It was the same thing that had led him to look for his sister for decades, to not give up when Scully had been taken or was dying. He hadn’t given up on Lucy Householder. These people needed help, too.) 

Scully didn’t look up, her jaw clenching. “That’s what I thought,” she said fiercely. Mulder swallowed and searched for something comforting to say, but he had nothing. No excuses. “Do you know what the worst part is?” she hissed, angry, fists clenching harder. “It’s the fact that you were dying for goddamn months beforehand and you never said a thing. I’m halfway convinced you don’t give a damn about your life, Mulder, or how it affects the people around you.” She paused, continued shakily: “Maybe you wouldn’t have left if you did.” And then she turned and went into the bedroom, the door snicking shut quietly. It was almost worse than a slam. 

Mulder stood in the living room, hands clenched awkwardly in the fabric of his jacket pockets. He stood until he could move without getting sick. He went upstairs and stood under the heavy warm stream of the shower in the other bathroom. When he came downstairs, the door was still closed so he grabbed a quilt and crawled onto the couch. He lay still, trying to forget everything, the fight, but Scully’s words kept coming back to him. He felt like he was falling apart from the inside out.

He fell asleep restless, freezing cold even under the downy quilt.

\---

Lyla could see the beam of the flashlight dancing at the space below her door. Usually it meant that Anna was sneaking out, which usually meant that Lyla had to stay in bed and not tell or she would be (in Anna’s words) dead meat. But she didn’t think she cared in that moment. Something was about to happen; she could feel it. It was like electricity in the air.

Lyla slipped out of bed, socked feet sliding across the hardwood floor, and crept to the door. She thought she could sneak up on her sister without making any noise, but the door creaked when she opened it. Anna whirled on her, light shining right in her eyes. “What are you doing, squirt?” she hissed. “Go back to sleep!”

Lyla shook her head firmly, pushing into the hallway. “I’m coming,” she said in a loud whisper. “And you have to let me, or I’ll tell Mom on you.”

“Wanna bet?” Anna snarled.

Lyla raised an eyebrow in challenge and crept towards their mom’s bedroom door.

“Fine, fine, come on,” Anna whispered frantically, putting her hand over the flashlight to muffle the light. “But you have to promise not to scream.”

She made Lyla put on her coat and boots, which was annoying, but Lyla was mostly just happy she was letting her come. Anna opened the door and pulled it open silently before holding a finger to her lips and leaving the house. Lyla followed, nerves tingling with excitement. As soon as they were out on the porch, Anna turned off the flashlight and there was only the moon. 

They walked silently up the dirt road, leaving footprints in the snow. Lyla clenched her teeth together so they wouldn’t chatter and looked up at her sister. “Are we going to see the scarecrows?” she whispered.

“Shh!” Anna growled. And then: “Yeah, if we’re lucky. They always walk when someone new comes to town.”

Lyla shivered, looking back up towards the road. They were approaching Calvert’s fence, and it was empty, void of the usual row of scarecrows. “Anna,” she said. “Hey, Anna, it’s empty.”

Anna turned and saw it, sprinted over to the wooden fence. Lyla struggled to keep up with her, too-big boots flopping almost comically. When she got there, Anna was staring at the poles with a look of disgust. “Shit, we missed it,” she said.

“You shouldn’t say shit,” Lyla said sadly, reaching out to touch an empty pole with her cold hand. “Mom’ll get mad.”

“You just said it, squirt,” Anna retorted, kicking at a pile of snow. And then her eyes lit up with interest. “Hey, Ly, look at this.”

Lyla turned, curious, and gasped at what she saw. There were spurts of bright red liquid on the snow, and beside it, unusual marks. Almost what she thought straw might look like if someone pressed it into the snow. “Look,” Anna said, pointing up the road. “They went that way.”

“You’ve really seen them walk?” she whispered.

“Yep. I hide in those bushes, over there; I’ve never let them see me.” She was whispering in terrified excitement. “I don’t know what would happen if they did.”

Lyla stared at the footprints with frightened awe, eyes wide. “Where do they go?”

“I don’t know,” Anna said. “Nowhere good.”

\---

He was hanging from a cliff, and Scully had him by the hand. _ I won’t let go _ , she whispered. 

_ Scully, the baby, _ he said.  _ You have to take care of the baby. _

_ I won’t bury you twice, _ she said, and he could suddenly feel the clots of grave dirt in his throat, choking him, closing him out. He coughed, swinging wildly from Scully’s hand.

_ Agent Muuuuulder, _ someone sing-songed below him. He looked down and saw the victims at the bottom, dirt caked in their hair and coating their face. Cara Roberts was looking up at him, her husband holding her hand; she waved at him, a wiggly-fingered greeting.  _ Ready to come down here? _

_ No, _ he said.  _ I’m gonna be a father. _

_ I won’t let go,  _ Scully said again. Her fingernails dug into his skin; blood ran down his hands.  _ Don’t leave me, please. _

_ I won’t,  _ he said, but someone yanked hard on his ankle. Scully shrieked as he slipped further through her fingers.

_ You can’t escape this,  _ Cara Roberts said gleefully.  _ You have to come back to the ground. _

He was choking on grave dirt; he couldn’t scream. Scully cried out as his hand slipped out of hers and he started to fall.

Mulder jolted away, his cheek pressed into the patterned upholstery. He was breathing hard. Moonlight streamed through the window, drawing a white path along the rug. He sat up, feeling an unavoidable need to see Scully. He wanted to apologize.

He turned and saw the burlap face at the window, nose curving forward like a beak, stitched mouth curved upwards in a grimace.


	5. Chapter 5

Mulder jolted in place, fumbling for his gun before he remembered that he didn't have it. His hand slipped uselessly down the side of the quilt and he looked back up towards the window, pulse thundering in his ears.

The scarecrow was gone.

Heart pounding and not entirely sure if he'd imagined it or not, Mulder scrambled to his feet. It had gotten a hundred times colder, it seemed; his breaths came out in puffs and the cold floor was like needles under his bare feet. He went into the kitchen and fumbled in the dark for some kind of defense. His fingers curled around the handle of a knife and he snatched it up. The moonlight bounced off the blade as he held it threateningly out in front of him. Silence in the room outside of his ragged breathing. 

He needed to see Scully. He needed to make sure she was okay. He stumbled to the door, knife held down by his side, and opened it clumsily, whispering, “Scully?” frantically. 

A murmur before the figure in the bed moved. “Mulder, what is it?” she mumbled, shoving at the quilts. He couldn't deduce her mood by her voice.

“I… just wanted to check on you,” he said as the memory of their fight came crashing down on him. “And I wanted to…”

He made the mistake of looking towards the window. The scarecrow was back, and it seemed to be smirking at him. 

“Scully!” 

“What?” She was struggling to get up and look at him, balance thrown off by her stomach. He stumbled to the edge of the bed to help her up and assumedly shield her, but when he looked up the scarecrow was gone again. “Mulder, what is it?” Scully asked softly. She sounded confused and a little scared. Her eyes were red like she'd been crying. She was somewhat leaning against him, and she moved off and onto the pillows to look at him.

“Scully?” he asked, eyes going back to the window. All he could see was the snow and the overlying dark of the trees and the night sky. “Did you see something at the window?”

“No,” she said, and he couldn't gage whether she was concerned or irritated. “Did you?”

“I thought I did,” he muttered, lowering the knife to the bedside table.

Her hand pressed into his arm, and she said, “Mulder…” in a weary voice. 

“Scully, I'm sorry,” he said, because he was sorry and he was worried about her and he wasn't going to leave her alone with…  _ something _ walking around the cabin and peering in the windows. “I had no idea…” 

She sighed, just as wearily, and said, “Come here.”

“What?”

She shifted back onto her side, facing him, said, “Come  _ here _ ,” and seized a handful of his t shirt and pulled him down beside her. “It's freezing,” she mumbled, leaning her head against his chest. “I'm sorry, too. I didn’t mean to… I’m sorry.”

He certainly wasn't going to argue this point at the moment, not with something stalking them outside, so he shifted closer and pulled the blankets over them. Her breath puffed out in cold bursts, and she kept a hard hold on his shirt. The baby kicked furiously between them and he stroked the spot. 

He saw something move outside the window and held her a little closer, burying his face in her hair. Something scraped slowly across the window, an unusual sound, and he looked up to see a straw hand dragging a slow path across the glass. 

\---

He woke up with his cheek plastered to the mattress and Scully gone. He shoved the covers aside, panicking, and was preparing to shout her name when she came into the room, holding a steamy mug. “Hi,” she said, sitting on the edge of the mattress. 

“Hi,” he said, awkwardly, shifting into a sitting position. He shivered in the chilly air. “I thought you were…”

“I'm fine,” she said, looking down at her knees. 

One of her palms was braced against the mattress and Mulder placed his hand over hers. “I'm so sorry, Scully,” he said. “I had no idea what it was like for you…”

“It's not your fault. How could you know?”

“You could've told me,” Mulder pointed out.

She slid her hand out from under his, clutching the mug in both hands. “You never told me about what it was like during my abduction,” she replied softly. “I had to find out from Skinner.”

“Things were different between us back then. I didn't want to burden you.”

“It wouldn't have been a  _ burden _ , Mulder,” she said tightly. “But by that logic, why should I burden you?”

“Of course I'd want to know, Scully.” She was still holding the mug so he touched her side gently. “I worry, you know.”

“I know.” She took a long sip from the mug before setting it down on the bedside table. “I just… thought  _ you'd  _ know. How it'd affect me. I thought it went unsaid.”

He pulled at a loose string at the quilt, embarrassed and unsure of what to say. “I did know,” he mumbled. “How it would affect you. That was why I didn’t tell you. About the… my… brain disease.”

“And you thought that would be  _ better _ ?” Her voice was sharp. “Mulder, you would’ve killed me if I’d kept my cancer from you. You would’ve been furious. You would’ve accused me of pushing you away.”

“This was different,” he hissed.

“ _ How _ , Mulder? How was it different?” 

He opened his mouth, shut it. He didn’t have an excuse, other than that he didn’t want to see that look on her face - of devastation, of bargaining or planning to save him or denial. He didn’t want to cause her that pain. It was a stupid decision, and he regretted making it. He would’ve told her if he’d known about the baby.

“It’s over now,” Scully said, stiffly, pressing fists into her knees. “You’re okay. That’s what matters. I just want to make sure you stay that way.” 

He got up, stumbling over a shoe he’d left on the floor the day before. “I’m going for a run,” he said, not looking back at her, grabbing his shoes and shoving them on his feet.

“Just make sure you don’t disappear back to Calvert’s,” she muttered, voice thick with resent.

Mulder bit his lip so he wouldn’t say the things he was thinking and let the door close hard behind him. It was still freezing inside; he tried to turn the heat up but the thermostat was clearly broken. Swearing, he grabbed his jacket and went out into the cold. 

He ran, in no particular direction and with no destination in mind, until his lungs burned and he stopped, leaning hard against a tree. His eyes slipped closed; he tried to catch his breath, wiping sweat away from his forehead. 

“You're Mulder, right?”

He jolted, startled, before he recognized the voice and turned. Lyla Haswell, bundled up in a coat and hat and scarf and mittens, was looking up at him curiously, molding a snowball between her wool palms. “Yeah,” he said. “Hi, Lyla. What are you doing here?” (He barely knew how to be around children, he’d be a terrible father.)

“Playin’. Mommy lets me go to the end of the street.” She launched the snowball past him and it smacked hard something behind him, a satisfying thump. “Did you see the scarecrows last night?”

Mulder froze a little, turning to look at where the snowball had hit. He was standing in front of Calvert’s fence with its line of scarecrows. He flinched violently at the sight of the effigies, but they didn't move. One of them, a newer-looking one, fluttered in the wind, straw hat placed lopsided on its face. 

“Anna and I came down here last night,” Lyla added confidentially. “We missed ‘em, though. They were already gone. We saw their footprints.” She offered him a gap-toothed smile. “Did you see them, Mulder?”

He shrugged, trying to regain some nonchalance. “Is your mom home?”

“Uh-huh.” The girl kicked at a pile of snow. “She's been on the phone all morning, yelling, so she sent me out to play. She didn't wanna go to church cause she's mad at the preacher. Where's that other lady you were with?”

“You mean Scully? Um… Dana, I mean?”

“Uh-huh. Dana. She was nice.”

“She's back at the house,” he said. “Just me today.”

Lyla kept kicking at the pile of snow; she seemed to be forming a structure with the toe of her boot. “Our house is down that way if you wanna go help Mom out,” she announced. “I'm gonna watch the scarecrows and see if they move.”

Mulder might’ve asked more questions, might’ve stayed and watched himself, if he wasn't scared of what would happen if he did. Of what the scarecrows wanted. (A ridiculous sentence, but a valid one considering the events of last night. And besides that, it was hardly the most ridiculous thing he'd been pursued by.) So he trailed down the snowy street towards Haswell’s house in silence.

In retrospect, he hadn't considered the case since sometime the night before. He'd been too busy getting scared and arguing with Scully. And he hadn't thought of anything on the run; he ran to forget. But now it was staring him in the face again, the prospect of the deaths. He couldn't leave things unfinished, but he also had to get enough to get things started. Maybe if he and Haswell could gather enough evidence, then he and Scully could leave, send Doggett The New Wonder Partner here to deal with it. Get justice for these people and not get himself killed (again) in the process. This was definitely an X-File; if the cause of death hadn't confirmed that, then the strange scarecrows did. There had to be a connection. 

He went to Haswell's door and knocked on it, hoping she'd have good news. “Agent Mulder,” she said with surprise when she opened. “Come on in.”

“You really don't have to add the agent every time; just Mulder is what most call me,” he said, stepping inside - they were somewhat colleagues, and besides that, he already called her by her surname in his head. (Force of fucking habit, seeing as how he referred to all of his friends, his boss, and the love of his fucking life in that manner.) “I don't know if I'll be able to convince Scully to do the autopsies,” he added, remembering their conservation the night before. “We, um. Had a fight last night.”  _ And were visited by personified effigies. You know. Normal stuff for us. _

“That's okay, considering they won't let me exhume the bodies,” Haswell said with some frustration, throwing down her phone on the counter. It gave a hollow little clatter.

“What? Were the families unwilling?”

“They didn't even bother to ask the families, just shot me down. Said there was no use in doing an autopsy because they died of goddamn natural causes.” Haswell kicked the table leg in frustration before sitting wearily down in a chair next to the table. “I'm sorry you and Scully fought,” she added.

Not very used to discussing his personal issues, especially when it came to relationships, he said, “That's fine,” awkwardly, and quickly changed the subject. “Is there any other way to implicate Calvert?”

“There's always the possibility that Calvert didn't do it. We could interview him and see if there's anyone who he thinks would've been targeting his patients.” Haswell sighed, ducking her head. Loose hair fell around her face, shielding it from view. “Honestly, I don't know what's come over me. A day ago, I wouldn't have suspected Calvert… that any of these deaths were murders… and now…”

Mulder remembered the point Scully had made the day before, that Haswell had seemed off, in a way, almost like she was hiding something. He could see it now - her uncertainty, uneven tone. “Things come at you out of nowhere sometimes,” he tried.

Haswell sighed again, pulling at a patch of peeling paint on the wall with her thumbnail. “That is true.”

His mind straying back to the night before, he asked, “Do you remember Anna's story about the scarecrows?”

“Yeah, but that's just a kid's story, like I told you.” She dug her thumbnail under a chunk of paint, not looking at him.

She probably wouldn't believe him, but worth a shot. “I think there's some substance to it,” he said.

Haswell snorted, rolling the chunk of paint between her thumb and forefinger. “What makes you think my daughter's ghost story has substance?” 

Since opening the X-Files, he'd operated on a  _ just say it  _ policy, thinking that people would either believe him or they wouldn't. There was a point where he stopped caring whether anyone besides Scully believed him, in the long run. “I saw them,” he said. “Outside my window. Staring in at me. I  _ heard  _ them.”

Haswell made a sound of disbelief that he was a little too used to hearing. “Do you think Calvert drugged you?”

Mulder blinked rapidly, surprised. “ _ What _ ?”

Haswell shrugged. “Made you see things. Part of his plan, since you made yourself a target. Hallucinations.”

“I didn't take anything from him,” Mulder said tensely. “I  _ know  _ what I saw.”

She shrugged again, finally turning to face him. “People tell stories about the scarecrows, Mulder, but I've never seen them move in my lifetime in this town, or the thirteen years I’ve spent in this house. You've convinced me that these are murders; there's enough proof of that. But I'm not going to go waste my time digging into ghost stories.”

Okay, then; she wouldn't believe him about the scarecrows and they seemed to be out of options. Fine. “I just wanted to stop in for a minute,” he said shortly. “I should go on now.”

“All right, then.” Haswell stood, assumedly to show him to the door. “I'll try and get an interview with Calvert.”

“You have Scully's number, just call her if you get it,” he said. “Although I probably shouldn't go, as a ‘patient’ of his. Keeping up personas and all.”

“You're probably right.” They went together towards the door, passing a framed photograph of a guy who looked vaguely like Lyla holding a baby and a chubby-cheeked toddler with pigtails on his lap. Haswell smiled wistfully when she saw it. “That's Anna and Lyla with their dad,” she explained.

The guy in the picture looked healthy, happy, holding his children with blissful ease. Mulder tried to picture himself like that with the baby and found the image fuzzy but there, whole. 

“How did your husband die?” he asked, even though it was none of his business.

Haswell gulped, looking down at her shoes, and he instantly felt bad for asking. He understood grief as well as anyone, understood the cloud it cast over you. “It was at a church picnic at the river,” she said. “Lyla was a baby and I stayed home with her. My husband… Bobby… he took Anna for the afternoon. The reverend called me and told me there'd been an accident. Anna had almost drowned and when Bobby jumped in to try and save her, he hit his head on a rock and bled out.”

Her voice was hard, like she resented him for asking. He thought about telling her that he really did understand, that his father, mother, sister, and ex-girlfriend/ex-near-fiance were all dead, that he himself had been dead a week ago. “I'm sorry,” he said instead. 

“It's been a long time,” said Haswell, the traditional grief answer. “It's hard, but I'm used to it.” She walked past him to open the door. “Thanks for dropping by, Mulder; I'll call you if anything new comes up.”

“Thank you,” he said awkwardly, moving towards the door. 

“Tell Scully I said hello,” she added, door halfway closed. “And whatever’s going on between you two… I hope you work it out.” With that, she closed the door gently but firmly.

_ I hope so, too,  _ he thought, turning to head back to the house. He found Anna Haswell waiting for him once again, arms crossed over her chest. “Did you see the scarecrows?” she asked, with that childhood fascination he used to have on X-Files.

Should he tell a kid? She seemed to be the only other one who'd seen them before. “Uh, yeah,” he said. “Last night. Is that bad?”

Anna considered his question, tipping her head to the side. “Only if they see you,” she said finally, before moving past him into the house.

Well. They had definitely seen him. And Scully, too.

Mulder ran all the way home, lungs burning, heart pounding. Scully jumped when he burst into the house, sweaty and out of breath. She was on her feet and heading into the bedroom before he could say anything.

“Scully…” he gasped, trying to get her to stop.

The door shut behind her.

\---

The Haswells had a strict policy of sitting down to dinner every night, and it was a mostly unbroken policy. Usually Mari Haswell was a pretty good cook but tonight they ended up with burned grilled cheese. “Sorry, guys,” their mom said as they sat down. “I'm a little out of it.”

_ No kidding, _ Anna thought darkly. Ever since those FBI agents came around, everything had been changing. She was used to the scarecrows, sneaking down to Calvert’s and watching them, and she was used to her mom getting a little withdrawn for a few days every time they moved. But this was different. She was becoming obsessed, pushing away people they'd known forever - when Lyla had suggested inviting Jeff to movie night, she'd vehemently declined, and she'd refused to go to church that morning because of an argument with the reverend. Not that Anna entirely minded - she'd had an irrational hate of the reverend since she was a kid, hated to be near him. But still, it was weird behavior for her mom. She'd become completely absorbed in… something, and suddenly these FBI agents were her new best friends. It was strange.

“Mommy, can we have soup?” Lyla was asking. 

Their mom wasn't listening, picking apart the edges of her sandwich. “How would you guys feel about moving?” she said out of nowhere.

“No!” Lyla shouted, almost shrieking. “I don't wanna leave my friends!”

“Why do you want to move?” Anna asked, honestly shocked. “We've lived here forever. Dad's buried here.”

Their mom flinched. “It's hard being where your dad died,” she said softly. “And besides… it's too tiny here. No excitement. Nowhere to go, and we get snowed in all the time, even in the spring.”

“Molly says Dr. Calvert does the snow,” Lyla said, still pouting. “She says he controls the weather.”

“See? There are all these stories,” her mom said lightly, waving a hand at Lyla’s curly head. “Do you really wanna live in a town where they talk about creepy guys who control the weather and-and scarecrows walking?”

“Yes,” Lyla said stubbornly. 

Anna met her mother's eyes. “Do you believe the stories?” she asked. “About Calvert?”

Something flashed over their mom's face before she relaxed, making a silly face. “No,” she scoffed. “Of course not. They're just stories.”

She was lying. Anna could always tell when she was lying. Her mom had always lied about the scarecrows. She'd lied better to the FBI agents, Mulder and Scully, than to Anna. “Mom?” she asked. “Do the scarecrows kill people?”

“Bam!” Lyla shouted, flattening her sandwich with the heel of her hand. No one paid any attention to her. 

Her mom faked a little laugh. “Sweetie, of course not.”

“I've seen them walk,” said Anna, almost a challenge. She squared her shoulders, lifted her chin in defiance. “And every time they walk, you get called out to find dead tourists a few days later. I've paid attention. I keep track.”

“Anna…” her mom said, warningly.

“They really do walk, Mommy,” Lyla announced. “Anna took me to see last night…”

Anna leapt to her feet in an attempt to silence her sister, but her mom was up before she was. “Anna Rose Haswell,” she said quietly, dangerously. “You listen to me and you listen good. You do not take your sister to see the scarecrows, you do not go period. You do not antagonize Calvert, you do not go near his property. Do you understand me?”

Lyla burst into tears. Anna shrunk back a little; their mom rarely got this mad. “Yeah,” she muttered through clenched teeth.

Her mom's words seemed to catch up with her and she shrunk back, collapsing in on herself again. “I'm going to bed,” she mumbled. “There's a pizza in the freezer, Anna; you guys can make it and watch a movie. This dinner sucks.” She turned and went back, upstairs to her room, her feet pounding the stairs.

Lyla was still crying. Anna handed her a box of Kleenex and went to stick the pizza in the oven. Then she pulled off her sneakers and crept upstairs in her sock feet. She knew how to sneak around by now, she had years of practice. The light was on in her mom's room and behind the closed door, she was talking furiously. Anna crouched and pressed her ear to the crack under the door to hear better. “This has to stop now,” her mom was saying. “You know it does. You can't keep doing this.” She paused, continued: “Because it is fucking  _ immoral _ , don't you get it? It's wrong, even if what you're looking for isn't. And frankly, it's sick.”

Anna crept down the stairs; she didn't want to hear anymore. She fixed the pizza and sat on the couch with Lyla and watched episode after episode of  _ The Simpsons _ until she fell asleep there. 

She dreamed about her father on the day he died. They were in the river and he was throwing her up in the air and she was laughing. And then she was sitting on the bank, soaking wet, shivering, her lungs and chest aching. Her father was on the ground and her reverend was leaning over him. Her Uncle Jeff scooped her up and carried her away.  _ You don't need to see this, squirt,  _ he said.  _ C’mon, think of something nice. Smile for me. _

But there was nothing nice to think of, nothing to smile about. The images changed again: the scarecrows passing in front of her in a line. And suddenly, her father's voice:  _ Anna Banana?  _ She turned around and around looking for him but couldn't find him. She turned back to the line of scarecrows; one of them was standing still, looking right at her.  _ Run,  _ he said. 

Anna woke up, gasping for breath. She slid out from behind her sister and padded upstairs. Her mom’s light was still on.

\---

Scully stayed in her room all day with the door closed and Mulder didn't try to engage in conversation. He made some small attempt at dinner and took it to her, and she mumbled a thank you without looking at him, head ducked down over her book. (The same bent-up Dennis Lehane that he'd been reading the first morning.  _ Gone Baby Gone,  _ a book that reminded him too much of his own life.) He was planning to sleep on the couch again before he remembered. The scarecrows, the face at the window. Scully, the baby. He couldn't leave them alone in there. 

Mulder got up and went into the room. Scully was exiting the bathroom, hair wet and snaking around her shoulders, clad in her pajamas - her own, button down pajamas instead of one of his shirts. “Mulder, I'm not in the mood of a confrontation right now…” she began wearily. 

“That's not why I'm here,” he said immediately. “I want to… stay with you tonight.”

She swallowed, looked at the ground, said hollowly, “I need some space right now.”

“Scully, please,” he said, emotions bubbling up in his throat. “Those…  _ things _ were here last night, and I don't know what they wanted and I don't care if you believe me or not but I'm sure as hell not leaving you and the kid vulnerable.”

“I can take care of myself,” she muttered. 

“Well, then let me sleep in here for my own safety,” he snapped, and she flinched. “Scully, look,” he said, trying to iron the anger and fear out of his voice. “I'm an asshole and I'm sorry and I should've told you about my disease the fucking day I found out. I should've kept you with me every goddamn step of the way and I never should've left you when you were sick. And maybe I never should've gotten involved in this case, and that was stupid of me, and if this is related then I don't know what these things want with me. Or with you. But goddamnit, Scully, you are pregnant with my child and believe it or not that does mean something to me.” He stepped closer to her, reached out to touch her shoulder, continued in a softer voice: “So please. Please let me sleep in here until we can get out of this weird fucking town.”

Scully bit her lip, nodded, turned away from him and slid under the covers. She was still positioning herself when he climbed in beside her, on the other side of the mattress from him. He crawled across the mattress and kissed her cheekbone. “I'm sorry, Scully,” he whispered.

In response, she reached up and switched off the light. “Good night, Mulder.”

\---

Mulder woke up at the sound of the door creaking open when he was sure he'd locked it.  _ Just your imagination,  _ he thought for a wild second. And then he heard it: the faint scratching of straw on the floorboards.

He took a frightened, uneven breath and scrambled across the mattress to Scully, to shield her or something like that. And then he heard the raspy voice that he'd heard in his dream the night before: “Agent Muuuuulder,” a strange and off-kilter singsong. 

Scully stirred beside him, opened her eyes and started in a questioning voice, “Mul-” 

He put a hand over her mouth and she jolted, her hand shooting to his wrist before she saw who it was. Her face contorted, a question; he held a finger to his lips, mouthed,  _ It's here.  _ Her eyes widened, but she nodded silently as he moved his hand away. 

_ Scrape, scrape.  _ “Come on out, Agent Mulder,” the voice said in that same eerie singsong. “You can't escape.”

Scully had kept ahold of his wrist; she motioned him towards the closet in the corner. They got off of the bed carefully, feet hitting the carpet, and moved together into the closet. The scraping moved towards the door to their room. Scully tugged him hard into the closet and pulled the door most of the way closed - not letting it close all the way to avoid the click, he assumed. She let go of his wrist and wrapped an arm around his waist, leaning hard into him. Her right hand was pressed against her stomach. He moved his left hand down to her stomach, on top of her hand. The baby kicked; Mulder couldn't tell whether it was out of fright or excitement.  _ Don't worry, kid,  _ he thought.  _ I'll protect you.  _

Outside the closet, the bedroom door slowly creaked open. Scully pressed her face into his shoulder, her hand wrapping tighter around the baby.  _ Please, God,  _ Mulder thought furiously, momentarily forgetting he didn't believe in God. 

The strange, scraping footsteps continued across the room, the rug, the floorboards. There were multiple scarecrows; Mulder mentally took stock. His eyes were on the crack where the door hadn't closed all the way, he could see part of a bulky scarecrow arm through it. The baby was kicking furiously under their hands. Scully breathed shakily into his shoulder.  _ Don't fucking hurt my family,  _ he wanted to yell but he was paralyzed and he had to protect Scully and the kid. At all costs.  

Silence for a moment, and it was the scariest thing yet. And then the voices, all chorusing together: “He is different. He has the Mark of Death.” Mulder tried to calculate how many there were, but it was impossible. At least a dozen, probably more. Around the number of the victims. He swallowed raspily, pulling Scully further into him with his right arm. 

The strange, shuffling footsteps started again, the rasp of straw over wood. Mulder had his eyes closed but he made the mistake of opening them and looking at the crack in the door. A raggedy scarecrow was standing directly in front of the crack, and it seemed to be smiling at him.

Mulder bit down on his lip to keep from crying out so hard that he felt blood, hands balling into fists around the silk of Scully's pajama shirt. His eyes crashed shut and when they opened, the scarecrow was gone. He held his breath; even breathing seemed dangerous in the moment, a true state of irony.

He felt a tug on his free hand, which had been pressed into Scully's shoulder; she was motioning him backwards into the closet. He crept back with her until they hit the back wall, and she braced her back against it and slid to the ground. He slid down beside her, his hand fumbling until it found her abdomen again. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head; she kissed the fingers of his other hand, gripping them tightly. They waited. 

He wasn't sure how long they sat there in the dark, a small crack of moonlight spilling in from the door. Long after the scraping had stopped, at least. He finally mumbled, “I think I need to see if they're gone,” into her hair.

She nodded, soft hair brushing against his chin. “Mulder, I'm…” she started, some kind of apology or plea. 

“Shh,” he whispered. “It's okay. Where's your gun?”

“Bedside table drawer.” He nodded and started to get up, but her palm pressed against his arm. “I'm coming with you,” she said firmly.

Any other time he might’ve agreed, but not this time. “Scully, you can't. You have to take care of the baby.” 

He expected an argument, but she was just quiet for a minute before nodding. Their dynamic had shifted now that there was someone else to protect. He kissed her cheek, her nose, her forehead before getting to his feet and heading for the door. “Be careful,” Scully growled behind him in a voice he wouldn't dare disobey.

Mulder left the closet quickly, shutting the door behind him. The floor was littered with prints, bloody prints that resembled what he assumed straw would look like if it were pressed to the floor. Proof they hadn't imagined it, that it hadn't been another shared hallucination in North Carolina, Hell State of Evil Mushrooms and Lung-Invading Tobacco Beatles. He went for the gun, gripping it in both hands, and surveyed the cabin the way they'd taught him at Quantico. Living room and kitchen clear, bathroom clear, second bedroom and closets clear, except for the strange tracks that he assumed would be the footprints of a moving scarecrow. He checked outside: only the snow and the wind and the stars. The tracks led away from the house, up the road. They were safe for now, it seemed. ( _ But for how long?  _ the traitorous voice in his head taunted.)

Mulder didn't let go of the gun as he went aside. “Scully, it's me,” he whispered as he opened the closet. “We're safe, they're gone.”

She breathed a sigh of relief as he went to help her up, wrapped her arms around him in a brief, awkward, rib-crushing hug before pulling away and asking, “What  _ was  _ that?”

“I can only assume that those were the scarecrows from Calvert’s fence,” said Mulder. Her hair was tangled, and he smoothed it back with one hand. “And also possibly the spirits of his victims using the scarecrows as a vessel.”

Scully covered her face with her hand and laughed bitterly into her palm. “I think we've descended into the land of the truly ridiculous,” she muttered.

“And bad B-material. Don't forget bad B-material.” He squeezed her shoulder.

“Those… things…  they came for you, Mulder,” she breathed. “They said you had something… some mark…”

“The mark of death or whatever,” Mulder said uneasily. They were both grimacing in the dark of the closet.

“You're a target,” Scully whispered. “They lured you here, somehow… the blackout…”

He swallowed uneasily. “I think it's safe to say that we need to get out of here, Scully.”

She nodded, her hand curled around his arm. “As soon as it gets light. We'll go as soon as it gets light.”

Neither of them could go back to sleep; neither of them wanted to. They sat together on the couch, wrapped in blankets; Scully rested her head on his shoulder, Mulder held her gun on his lap, and neither of them slept. 

\---

They ate, quickly, in the morning, shoveling down scrambled eggs without saying much to each other. Mulder insisted on packing the car, quickly and trying not to slip too much on the snow. They didn't bother with the food. Mulder helped her to the car and she grumbled a little about it but didn't argue. He climbed into the driver's seat.

“Mulder,” Scully said, and when he turned to face her she leaned across the dashboard and kissed him, fierce, mouth soft and hot under his. 

“It'll be okay,” he whispered against her. “We're going to make it.”

“I know,” she said, kissed him again, squeezing his arm before she settled back against the seat. 

Mulder shifted the car into gear and pulled away from their parking spot.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for general eeriness, discussion/slight depiction of death, temporary death of a child

They didn't get very far. Of course they didn't, that would be too easy. There was a roadblock and scattered members of the police department were there. “Can't let you go any further,” the officer who stopped them told them regretfully.

“And why is that?” Scully said coldly.

The officer flicked his eyes over to the passenger seat, the woman in it, and gulped. “Roads too bad,” he said.

“We'll take our chances,” Mulder snapped, reaching for the gear shift.

“I-I can't let you do that, sir,” the man stammered. “Sheriff's orders.”

“We're FBI.” Scully presented her badge.

A man with a gargantuan mustache who was wearing the sheriff's badge came up to the car. “Ma'am, I'm afraid it doesn't matter who you are. You can't leave.”

“Where's Deputy Haswell?” Mulder demanded. “I want to speak to Deputy Haswell.”

“She's out. Resigned,” the awkward officer said. The sheriff shot him a look, and he slunk off, quietly.

“Hey, Sheriff, I know these guys,” said a man who Mulder recognized as the friend Haswell had called in, the one who had said it wasn't Calvert. Jeff something - Renner, maybe. _Funny_ , he thought darkly, _he's acknowledging us more than he did at Haswell’s_. “Agents… Mulder and Sully, right?”

“ _Scully_ ,” Scully corrected him sharply. Her voice was colder than the temperature outside.

“Right.” Jeff leaned on the car like they were old buddies, an apologetic look on his face. “Listen, guys, I'm sure you're real anxious to get home, but I'm afraid we can't let you through. You could crash, get killed, and I'm sure you don't want that with a little one on the way.”

“We're not concerned about crashing, I've had plenty of experience driving in the snow,” Mulder said shortly. “Besides, won't the weather be warmer further down the mountain? It's _April_.”

Jeff shrugged, a picture of innocence. “Don't know what to tell you.”

“There must be another road,” Scully said.

The sheriff shook his head. “This here's the only way out, unless you want to walk.”

“You can't keep us here,” she hissed, fierce and furious. “That's unlawful imprisonment.”

“No one's being imprisoned,” the sheriff said, his voice taking on a menacing tone. “Not yet, at least.” He lifted his jacket, just slightly, so that Mulder could clearly see his gun.

A wave of nausea rolled over Mulder, and he shifted the car into reverse. “Good decision, Agent Mulder,” Jeff said cheerfully. “Everyone will be safer this way.”

_Somehow I doubt that,_ Mulder thought viciously, turning the car around. As he turned, he saw Calvert in a look.black winter coat, standing near the road block. He offered Mulder a small smile. Mulder looked away.

“What are we going to do?” Scully whispered as soon as the window was up and they were driving the other way, back towards Calvert Pass. “We can't stay here, and we can't walk.”

“We need help,” Mulder said, clutching the wheel tightly so his hands wouldn't shake. “We need to go to Haswell's, I think she's our best option for getting out of here.”

“I don't know that we can trust Haswell.”

“I don't know that we have a choice,” he said. Scully bit her lip and nodded. “I think you should call Doggett. At the very least, he could come up with backup, right?”

Scully nodded again, jaw clenched. Her hands were pressed together in her lap. “Hey,” he said softly, letting go of the wheel with one hand to brush her shoulder. “It's going to be okay.”

Scully turned to look at him. Her face was grave, hands pressed to her stomach in a way that could only be described as protective. “I have a bad feeling, Mulder,” she said. “I don't know how to describe it, but I do.”

\---

They got to Haswell's quickly. Mulder came around the door to help Scully, and she made a face at him, and he said, “Please, Scully,” quietly, and she sighed and grabbed his arm to walk up to the porch.

Haswell looked a little surprised to see them. Actually, she looked kind of frazzled in general - in pajama bottoms and a ragged band t-shirt, hair in a frizzing ponytail, eyes a little wild. “Agents,” she said, opening the door a little wider.

“My field trip got canceled,” Lyla announced when they came in the door. She was sitting on the stairs with a book balanced on her lap. “Because of the stupid snow. That's why Anna’s at school and I'm not.”

“We need your help,” Scully was saying to Haswell, frantic.

“It was to the water treatment plant,” Lyla said. “I had to do a stupid report. It was established in 1974.”

“They won't let us leave town. We saw something last night, it came _in our house_ looking for Mulder, and we tried to leave town but they wouldn’t let us,” Scully said, her hand tightening around his arm.

Haswell closed her eyes in misery. “I was afraid of something like this,” she muttered. “I knew this would happen, it's goddamn inevitable.”

“What do you mean?” Mulder said sharply. (It seemed clear to him, in the moment, that Scully was right about Haswell being suspicious, and he should've seen it from the beginning. He'd made wrong choice after wrong choice after wrong choice, and now they were in danger because of it.)

Haswell turned to look at her daughter, who was staring at them with interest. “Lyla, go to your room and play,” she said. The little girl's eyes widened and she scrambled to her feet and ran up the stairs. “Come into the kitchen,” Haswell said to Scully and Mulder, motioning them forward. They didn't have any choice, it seemed, but to follow.

In the kitchen, Haswell paced back and forth. She grabbed an egg-smeared pan from the stove and started scrubbing it over the sink. “I wasn't going to get you involved in this, you know,” she said, scrubbing furiously.

Mulder and Scully sat down at the table. He reached for her hand underneath it, and she slid her fingers into his seamlessly.

“I've always felt guilty when these things happen, because who the hell wouldn't. I'm a cop who doesn't save people.” She turned on the water, a hard spray. “But I've learned to let it go. Take the statement and move on. Have a good life with my daughters. I was never interested in their damn agenda, and I didn't know what they'd do to me if I tried to stop it.”

“Mari…” Scully started, warily, squeezing his hand.

The pan hit the bottom of the sink, soapy water splattering the countertop, and Haswell turned to them. Her face was slightly softer than before. “I know you don't trust me right now,” she said. “You have the right. But you have to understand how long I've been living with this. Since _1987._ That's a lot of guilt, you know. I go away to school, to become a police officer, and I come back and learn what my town has come to. It's a hard thing to live with. I couldn't leave before because my parents were here and they were dying, and then I couldn't leave because I had two little girls established here and my husband buried here. So I've been trying to figure out how to deal with it for years. Because I know someday they'll try to recruit my daughters for their little club, and I don't want that for them. I want to save all those nice people who shouldn't have to die. Again.”

Mulder shuddered, his fingers tightening around Scully's. She knew from the beginning, she'd been playing them. “Haswell, just tell us the truth,” he said. “What the hell is going on here?”

“You want to know the truth?” Haswell snapped. “I've been trying to protect you. I thought maybe if you dug enough you'd put the pieces together, but it's too dangerous and this is bigger than the two of you. I thought if I played dumb and gave you Calvert as a starting point that you'd eventually figure it all out, find out what they were doing, but that didn't happen because you made yourself a fucking target. You want the goddamn truth?”

_It's out there,_ Mulder wanted to crack, but thought better of it. He always had the absurd instinct to make jokes in dire situations and they never went down well.

“The truth is that people die in this town, and it's no accident. And everyone knows about it and never does a damn thing. The truth is that the person who killed Cara and Kyle Roberts was trying to bring them back to life,” Haswell hissed.

Mulder froze, heart in his throat. Scully's fingernails dug into his jacket. _Of course,_ he thought. _Of course I find a case and it's goddamn necromancy._ Just his fucking luck.

“It never works,” Haswell said. “It never fucking works and the responsible party never learns, they're like goddamn children. They keep killing and killing and hoping for a different result, but they never get it. And no one can say a thing to them about it because they all think they're doing the right thing for this town.”

“Mari,” Scully said softly. She still had a firm grip on his sleeve. “Who's involved? How far up does this go?”

“Stay here,” Haswell growled. “I'll fix this, I'll tell them you were faking at your appointment, Agent Mulder, and then maybe they'll let you go. Then maybe you can send someone back to fix this godforsaken town. Stay here and watch my kid - Anna's at school, she’s going home with a friend, so you don't have to worry about her - and I'll be back.” She turned and stormed out the door before either of them could protest.

Mulder gulped. The lump in his throat was growing larger, suffocating, and he felt like he was going to be sick. “I wasn't faking,” he whispered.

\---

They tried to put together the pieces. Mulder got out a pad of paper and scribbled down everything they knew - the victim's names and dates of death (including the original three outliers), details of their encounters with the scarecrows, everything Haswell had said before she left. It wasn't much, not enough to make a comprehensive theory. “Haswell claimed that people have been killing tourists in an attempt to bring them back to life,” Scully said, hunching over the paper. “And everyone just… knows about it and does nothing?”

“Calvert has to be involved,” said Mulder. “Because Haswell said she'd hoped we'd put the pieces together starting with Calvert, so he has to be involved.”

“A cult? A group of people in the town who believe they can bring people back to life? This could be a necromancy version of Dudley, Arkansas,” Scully muttered.

There did seem to be several similarities. Mulder suddenly remembered her face washed out in firelight, her mouth taped and her eyes filled with fear, and he shuddered. “Something similar to a cult would make sense,” he said out loud. “Haswell didn't want to be involved in it, but she also couldn't get away from it or report it because these are the townspeople she's lived around forever. And she possibly can't leave because they won't let her.”

“She might’ve resigned in an attempt to get away,” Scully pointed out.

“I think this is the last straw and she hoped that we'd be able to get her out with our credentials, bring some justice to this fucked up place. She probably just didn't expect one of us to fit the M.O.”

“So they lure people here… either through Calvert’s counseling service, or the blackout, or both… and they kill these people who have recently died and come back to life, in the hopes that… what, that it'll happen again?” Scully sounded slightly disgusted.

“And the scarecrows is where they go when they don't come back to life,” Mulder said. “It's like Anna said - he traps the souls of his patients forever.”

Scully didn't point out how ridiculous that sounded. She just said, “Mulder, there are more than seventeen scarecrows.”

He was surprised she had counted; he'd been too busy being generally terrified by them. “Maybe there's more than seventeen victims. They started with uninvolved townspeople… maybe they kept going.”

“Or maybe the extras are for future victims,” Scully said softly. She was looking at him.

Some slight nausea overtook him. _You can’t escape this_ , Cara Roberts had said. _You have to come back to the ground_. But he would escape it; he had to.

Haswell didn't come back for a couple hours. “I think we should be worried,” Scully said. “If the bits and pieces of her story are true, then we can assume the townspeople will be hostile if she goes against them.”

“And if she was trying to trick us, was working against us, then she probably wouldn't have left us babysitting her kid,” said Mulder. He got up from the table, digging into his pocket for his keys. “I'm going after her.”

“No, you're not. You have no idea where she went, and besides that, we have Lyla here.”

“You stay with Lyla. I'll go.”

“You are not going alone,” she hissed angrily. “You have no idea what you're facing, and we only have one gun between us."

He sat back down; he wasn't going to argue, and he wasn't going to put Scully in danger, or Haswell’s kid.

Scully called The New Partner. “Agent Doggett? It's Scully,” she said, and Mulder was ridiculously happy she referred to him as _Agent._ “No, I'm fine, we both are. For now. But I don't know how much longer we'll be that way.” She paused uncertainly. “Listen, we ended up in a town in North Carolina called Calvert Pass. We were trapped here by the snow, and now the townspeople won't let us leave. We… Agent Doggett?”

Mulder tugged her sleeve. “What happened, did he hang up?”

“Agent Doggett? Doggett, are you there?” Scully spoke frantically into the phone, clutching it tightly in her hand like a lifeline. (It _was_ a lifeline: theirs.) Even pressed against her ear, he could hear the crackle of static. “Doggett!” She groaned with frustration suddenly, letting the phone drop onto the table. “Call got cut off,” she lamented. She grabbed the phone and started punching in buttons. “It's dead,” she confirmed.

“Try Haswell's, I'll change your batteries,” Mulder directed. But a battery change didn't do anything, and Haswell's  cell was dormant as well. There was no way to reach anyone on the outside.

“Can they do this? Control our phones like this?” Scully whispered, horrified. Neither of them knew.

There didn't seem to be anything left to do but make lunch for Lyla. She came down, asking where her mom was, and Mulder lied and told her _work_ , and Scully offered her lunch. She spread peanut butter over bread and cut it into triangles. Mulder watched in a mesmerized kind of way, tried to imagine her doing that with her kid. (No, wait, _their_ kid.) _She's going to get out of here,_ he told himself. _No matter what happens to me, she_ will _get out of here._

“When will Mommy be back?” Lyla asked softly when Scully put her plate in front of her.

“I don't know, sweetie. I'm sure it'll be soon,” Scully said.

The kid nodded, looking down at her plate in dejection and poking at her sandwich. Mulder thought of a distraction, a way to take their minds off of it all, and said, “Hey, you said you had to write a report, right? For the field trip you didn't go on?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You wanna show us the report? Scully… Dana’s a teacher, she could give you some pointers.” Apparently, Scully got his drift and nodded, smiling down at Lyla.

Lyla shrugged her shoulders, but she got to her feet and went back to her room, reappearing a few minutes later with a couple of sheets of large-lined notebook paper stapled together. She read her report seriously, in a voice that trembled with the obvious fear she had for her mother. When she was finished, they offered their compliments, and Lyla offered her a wobbly smile before heading off to watch television.

“You're pretty good with kids,” Mulder said when she was gone. It was the kind of thing he'd always thought and never said, because her daughter was dead and the IVF didn't work. But she was pregnant now and he could say that. (And nothing was going to happen to her, even now, so he really could say that.)

Scully murmured something like thanks, her head leaning against his shoulder.

Guilt was choking him, building thickly in his chest. “I'm sorry, Scully,” he mumbled into her hair. “I'm so sorry. I'm sorry I got involved in this, I'm sorry I didn't listen to you, that I put you in danger…”

“Mulder…”

“I'm sorry I left you. I'm sorry I walked into that fucking light because I was curious about what was on the other side. I'm sorry I didn't tell you I was dying.” He was on a role, had eight years of stuff to apologize for.

“ _Mulder_.” Her hand pressed into his chest, and he stopped. “You didn't know,” she said softly. “You couldn't have known. They lured you here, so we would've been in danger either way. You probably saved us by digging into the Roberts murders, made us more aware of the possibilities.”

“Still,” he said softly. “It was stupid.”

“It was,” she replied, turning her face into his neck. “I won't deny you did some dumb things, and I want to talk about it later. But I was unfair these past few days. I haven't been considering what you've been going through as much as I should have and I was too harsh the other night.”

“You were telling the truth,” he said. “You're entitled to your feelings, Scully, most of the time you don't even let me know how you feel about things…”

“Hush.” She pulled away to look in the eye, cupped his cheek. “We need to talk, and we will. But there's no sense in starting an argument now. We're going to get out of here.”

His hand moved up to cover hers. “And you're going to be a mom.”

She swallowed, turned her hand over in his and took it. “ _We're_ going to be parents,” she said, squeezing it. “If that's what you want.”

It was what he'd wanted since the IVF, since she'd awkwardly asked him to be the donor. He leaned in, resting his chin against her hair, not letting go of her hand. “It's what I want,” he whispered, and she pulled their hands up to her mouth and kissed the back of his.

They would get out of here, and so would the Haswells. They had to.

\---

It was freezing outside, and Anna was walking home alone.

Her friend’s father had been upset at dinner, something about the roadblock and the “goddamn FBI agents”. Penny and her little brother had been staring at him like they didn’t know him, and Penny’s mother had touched him on the arm and said, “Dear, not at the table… or in front of guests,” with a pointed look at Anna.

And Anna had thought about her mom, her request to move, her strange dream last night. Her dream-dad’s order for her to run. And she’d felt the need to get home right away, an unexplainable need crawling around under her skin. “I have to go,” she’d said, standing and walking quickly to the coat rack by the door. She didn’t even bother with getting her bag, just bundled up and ran. And now she was walking home alone.

The woods were almost absurdly dark, like something out of that stupid Robert Frost poem she had to memorize for school. Lovely, dark and deep, or whatever. Anna shivered, shoving her hands further into her pockets. And then she heard a strange voice, low and whispering: “Anna…”

Anna turned, startled, looking around. “Penny?” she demanded. No answer.

It had definitely been a woman’s voice. “Mom?” she called. “Lyla?” No answer. _Must’ve been just the wind_ , she thought furiously, even though it was a horror movie cliche, and started running.

“Anna Rose Haswell…”

Anna ducked behind a tree, heart pounding. She pressed her shoulder against it, trying to catch her breath. Don't let them see you, is what everyone says. If they see you, it's over. She held her breath, pressing herself against the bark, trying to shrink into herself. Something silver stuck up out of the snow: a lighter. She snatched it up, the closest thing to an actual weapon she had; it was cold in her hand.

A very distinct sound echoed in her ears, she knew it from watching the scarecrows walk a dozen times. It was the sound of a straw hand scraping against the bark of the tree. She pressed her back against the tree, shutting her eyes, and tried not to scream.

More scraping, more rustling. _Breathe in, breathe out,_ Anna instructed herself, trying to stay calm. And then the voice again: “Anna?”

She opened her eyes and found herself surrounded by the scarecrows. Blank button eyes, beaked nose, stitched smile. She screamed. One stepped towards her, and her fingers fumbled on the lighter until they found the right spot and a tiny flame popped up. She thrust it forward, onto the straw hand.

The scarecrow made an inhuman sound and stumbled backwards, waving its flaming arm. It brushed up against another scarecrow’s arm and that one went up in flames. The cycle repeated itself, several others going up. Anna turned, frantic, and thrust the flame at a few others. As more went up in flames, she ran, past them towards her house, dropping the lighter in the snow.

“Anna?”

She froze, boots skidding in the snow. This voice was different, familiar. She whirled around, tears falling, looking for the source. “Anna Banana?” the voice said again.

She turned and found the scarecrow that the voice was coming from. It wasn't burning yet, and it was looking at her. Not malevolently. She sniffled. It couldn't be. It couldn't be, but it had to be. “Daddy?”

“I have to show you something, baby,” he said. “I'm sorry.” And Anna's vision went fuzzy at the edges.

Her father was hunched over a limp little girl - _her_ \- on the banks of a river. _Please, you have to help me, you have to save her,_ he begged, and Anna saw Dr. Calvert all of a sudden, standing behind him with his hands in his pockets, a grave look on his face.

_I can't,_ he said sadly. _I'm not allowed._

_Please._ He was crying, cradling the girl who was Anna in his lap. _You can't do this, she's my daughter._

_I can't,_ Calvert said again. _I can't help you._

Her dad sobbed, hunching over her. He was whispering - _No, no, no_ \- and stroking her hair. Calvert looked away, like it was hard to watch. They stood there on the banks for a minute before Calvert stepped forward, putting a hand on her father's shoulder. _Calm down, take a deep breath,_ he said. _Here, drink some water._ He handed her father a canister.

_Goddamnit, I don't want_ water, her dad hissed. _My daughter is dead… god, please._ He was rocking her back and forth.

_Robert,_ Calvert said quietly. He sat beside them on the bank. _Just drink some water. It'll make you feel better._

Her dad made a terrible face, snatched the cannister from his hands and gulped a few mouthfuls before throwing it aside. _There. Are you fucking happy now, Terrence?_ He hugged her - Anna - close, kissing her head. _It won't bring my little girl back._

But it would; a minute later, Anna started moving. She bucked in her father's arms, coughing up the water harshly. Calvert scrambled back in surprise; her dad smoothed her wet hair back. Anna took raspy, trembling breaths, finally whispering, _Daddy?_

Her dad gathered his daughter up in his arms, hugging her tightly. _Oh, baby, it's okay,_ he whispered. _Just breathe, Anna, just breathe._

The scene shifted. The same place, different people. Calvert stood to the side. She was sitting on the bench seat of a picnic table with a beach towel around her shoulders, a young Jeff beside her. The reverend, younger, standing in front of her dad. Confronting him. _Just tell me what happened and this will all be over._

_I can't tell you what happened because I don't know! I'm not a part of your goddamn cult, Reverend, I don't know how I saved her. She was dead and then she was alive._ Her father was agitated, turning away from the reverend towards Anna.

_You don't know what happened._ The reverend's voice was dangerous.

_I don't._

The reverend moved forward and shoved him to the ground in one swift move. _You have to know!_ he roared, leaning over her dad. _Tell me what happened, tell me how you did it. It's not fair that my wife gets to stay dead and your daughter gets to come back!_

_Daddy?_ Anna called from a distance away. Jeff looked concerned; he pulled her onto his lap, covering her eyes.

_What the hell, Sam? Let me the fuck up!_ her dad shouted. _I don't know how it happened and I don't care! You're all crazy, this should've ended years ago!_

The reverend groped for something, his hand landing on a rock. He raised it over his head. Jeff lifted Anna and turned her away, _You don't need to see this, squirt,_ and the reverend looked down at him. _Tell me,_ he said quietly.

Her dad's eyes widened. _Don't do anything stupid, Sam, I told you I don't know…_

The reverend’s hand descended.

Anna screamed. She screamed at the top of her lungs, sobbing hard, her eyes screwed shut. “I'm so sorry, baby,” her father said through the scarecrow. “I'm sorry, but I had to do that, you had to remember. Your mom is in danger. She's in Calvert’s house. You need to go get help for her, and then you need to leave town.”

“Mom's in trouble?” she whimpered, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand.

“Yes, sweetie. I'm sorry to tell you this way. Just go get help and it'll be okay.”

She looked at the ground, didn't want to look at the thing that was talking for her father. “Okay,” she said. “I will. I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you, too, sweetie.” When she looked up, the scarecrow was walking away. She turned and ran the other way, wiping tears from her face.

\---

By dinnertime, Haswell still hadn’t come back. It was getting dark, and Mulder and Scully were sitting in the living room with Lyla, watching another rerun of _I Love Lucy._ Lyla was coloring on the floor, laughing halfheartedly and occasionally at the TV. Scully was quiet, half-napping with her head on Mulder's shoulder. And then they heard the scream; a piercing, screeching scream.

Scully jolted up beside him. “Mulder, what was that?”

“I don't know, I don't know,” he said frantically. Lyla was looking up at them with wide, teary eyes. _Please don't let it be Haswell,_ he thought.

“That's what Anna sounds like when she screams,” Lyla said, voice shifting towards tears. “I've heard it.” She hugged a throw pillow like a stuffed animal, terrified.

“Oh my god,” Scully breathed, turning to look at him. “Mulder…”

“Stay here, I'll go check,” he said, getting to his feet. Worry passed over Scully’s face, and he said, “It'll be fine, I promise.” He was talking to both of them, and he hoped it was true.

It felt like the temperature had dropped another twenty degrees outside - the temperature hit him like a ton of bricks. He shivered and grabbed his coat from the coat rack, wrapping it around him. “Anna!” he shouted into the cold and wind. There was no answer.

He picked his way down the frozen front path, past their car and to the main road, looking it up and down. “Anna?” he shouted. His voice came echoing back to him from the trees. Down the road, by an empty fence where the line of scarecrows should be, a small, dark-headed figure turned her head before ducking behind the fence.

Against his better judgement, likely, Mulder took off running. His feet slipped a few times on the snow and ice, but he managed not to fall. He reached Calvert’s house within the space of a few minutes. All the lights were off; the glass panels in the door to Calvert’s makeshift waiting room had paper taped over it.

The fence looked too empty; he tried not to dwell on where the scarecrows were. He shoved at the gate. Anna was crouched between a tree and the fence, somewhat out of sight of the house. “Anna?” he hissed, going to where she’d be in earshot.

“My mom’s in there,” Anna said darkly, urgently. “I have to save her.”

“What?”

“They murdered my dad! They murdered my dad and now they have my mom…” Her voice cracked and she wiped her eyes with the pads of her fingers.

“Whoa, slow down.” Mulder held up a hand, trying to calm her down. “Take some deep breaths and tell me what happened. It's okay.”

“It is _not_ okay,” she said fiercely. “I remember now. I remember the day my father died. The reverend bashed his head in with a rock from the river. Reverend Greene, I've always hated him but I didn't know why. Jeff was watching. He picked me up and carried me away so I wouldn't have to watch.”

Reverend Greene. He recognized the name, and suddenly realized why: the first victim, Matilda Greene, had been found and called in by her husband, Samuel Greene, the local reverend. There were blocky chunks of text blacked out in the file, the same as in the file for the second and third victims. And the second and third victims had been found by one and the same: Samuel Greene.

“My dad, my dad, he… told me. Through the scarecrows. I set them on fire,” Anna hiccupped, and she pointed towards the woods where a faint glow was coming. “He showed me, I saw it. And he told me they had my mom in here. I have to save her. Right now, I have to save her.”

Mulder's mind was racing, but he didn't have time to dwell. “Anna, listen. Listen to me.” His tone was unusually stern, and she turned to him in surprise. “I’ll go in. I’ll get your mom. I'll save her. You need to go back to the house where it’s safe. My partner, Scully, is there with Lyla, she'll protect you. You need to be there for your sister. I'll bring your mom home.”

Stunned into silence, Anna nodded. Her eyes were wide and watering, her cheeks red from the cold and aggressive wind.

“Go on,” Mulder said. “Run and don’t look back.”

She started to turn, stopped. “Promise you'll bring her home?”

He gulped. “I promise.”

She nodded, wiping her eyes. She slid under the fence and took off running without looking back.

Mulder breathed a small sigh of relief and began creeping towards Calvert’s without a second thought.

The house stayed silent, the scarecrows stayed still. He went to the front door, directly, and grabbed the doorknob. The door swung inwards effortlessly. _Okay,_ Mulder thought. _This is basically the beginning of a horror movie_. And because he’d always basically been a victim in a horror movie who’d managed to survive the films, he kept going.

The halls were dark, darker than the time he’d snuck around in the house before. Mulder fumbled in his coat for his penlight and found it somewhere in an inside pocket. The tiny beam didn’t do much to ward off the dark; he moved it from item to item to try and gage his surroundings, moved forward quietly. He reached for his gun for his free hand before he remembered he didn't have it. _Scully has the gun,_ he thought. _She'll be able to protect herself and the girls._ That seemed more important than anything.

He kept going down the dark hallway, the tiny light enveloped in his palm. He passed the table with the book on it, and froze when he saw it was open.

The same scrawl was on the new page: _FBI agent,_ _claims _ _to have drowned while being waterboarded by drug dealers that held him captive for three months and was resuscitated by his partner. Researching into him to confirm._ _Something different about him._ _From Alexandria, claims no immediate family._ _Claimed _ _staying in town with aunt,_ _really _ _staying in cabins with pregnant woman (aforementioned partner pictured above)_. And above the words was the picture, the one of him and Scully at a crime scene that had been featured in the article done on them a few years ago. Press for the stupid fucking movie, Federman had sent reporters sniffing around for a straight week. The picture he’d cut out and pinned up in their office. The only picture of them together in existence, as far as he knew.

Mulder felt nauseous. The weight of it all almost brought him to his knees. Scully. They knew she was here, they must’ve known what she meant to him. And that put her in danger. Fuck, why had he brought them here? He’d probably never forgive himself for that if they got out of here. ( _When_ , he corrected himself furiously, because they always got out. They'd get away this time, too.)

He forced himself to keep going, the pen light obscured in his shaking palm. Finding Haswell and getting out was the most important thing at the moment. He went up the stairs, floorboards creaking under his feet. He heard a muffled moan from behind a door. “Haswell?” he whispered, moving the pen light towards the noise.

The moan grew louder, along with several hard kicks to the door. He fumbled for the doorknob and yanked it open, revealed Haswell bound to a chair inside, her mouth taped shut.

“My god,” he muttered, dropping down to free her. He had to pull her out of the room - closet, really - because there was no extra space inside. He pulled the tape off as gently as he could. “Haswell… Mari… are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said impatiently, voice wobbly. “The girls, Mulder… are the girls okay? I heard Anna screaming...”

“They’re fine, they’re fine,” he said, undoing the knots at her ankles. “They’re both back at the house, Scully’s with them. Anna had a run-in with the scarecrows, she says, but she's fine… she said that the reverend killed her father, she said the scarecrows showed her…”

Haswell made a choking sound. “They killed my husband,” she whispered. “I heard them talking about it. And I never knew, never thought to look…”

“It’s okay.” His fingers slipped uselessly at the ropes around her wrists, and he kept working at loosening them. “Once we get out of here, we’ll send people in. They won’t get away with this.”

“They’re targeting you, Mulder,” she whispered. The ropes fell to the ground in a coil. He stood and helped her to her feet. She was gazing at him seriously in the dark. “It’s not safe…”

“I know, I know,” he said. “We’re going to get out of here. Is there anyone in the house?”

“I don’t know.”

They turned together towards the staircase and started cautiously downstairs. “What happened?” he whispered.

“I went to Jeff’s to try and talk things over with him. He drugged me, and I woke up here, in the closet. I don’t know who all’s been here, I’ve just heard people talking. My asshole reverend, the one who murdered my husband. Jeff. Calvert. They mentioned you a lot.”

“Who's involved in this?” They hit the bottom floor, Haswell stumbling a little; Mulder steadied her.

“I don't know, I never went to the meetings because I didn't believe in the cause. Dozens and dozens, but… I never knew how many people in my personal life… my doctor, my kid’s elementary school teachers…”

“What _is_ the cause, Mari? What's going on here?”

She turned to face him, dark eyes dead serious in the absence of light. “A long time ago, the people of this town had powers,” she said seriously. “In my lifetime, even. I used to make things float across the room, make it stop raining if I wanted to play outside…  Those powers started fading out of nowhere, after hundreds of years; people who already had them were weakened, my kids don't have them at all. Some have stayed around, weakly, the telekinesis and the weather stayed, but necromancy has faded completely. It was always the strongest and the hardest to use. They wanted to bring it back, they… They've been killing people who've had NDEs to try and bring them back to life, find out how to restore the power.”

Mulder's jaw clenched. “I lied,” he said. There was a burst of pain along his skull and he staggered, woozy. “I was dead a week ago.”

Haswell's eyes widened. And somewhere behind them, a floorboard creaked under a shoe.

_Go!_ Haswell mouthed, motioning him wildly towards the exit. She was running, faster than him; he tried to keep up but his head was spinning, his gait wobbly. He felt a little like he was going to faint. _Powers,_ he remembered Haswell saying. _Some have stayed around, weakly._ He had to get out of there.

The door swung open, exposing the night and stars and chilling wind. Haswell stepped out on the step and turned back to see him. It was so close, he was almost there, almost there…

The door slammed shut.

Mulder turned, dizzy, and saw Jeff standing behind him. His hand was up, aimed towards the door. _Telekinesis,_ he thought distantly.

“I'm sorry, Agent Mulder,” Jeff said, as the floor came up to meet him. “But I think you really do have a better chance than the rest.”

Everything went black.

\---

Dr. Tom Henderson was a man of simple needs. He was old-fashioned, he liked to smoke a pipe in the evenings. He always shared dinner with his wife, Lucinda. They watched _Jeopardy_ every single night that he was home. On the nights he wasn't, Lucinda would watch without him and write down the questions she hadn't known the answers to and quiz him over breakfast the next morning. It was the simplest existence possible, he thought. Aside from some shadowy candle-lit nights and a few major surgeries (and one snowy night years ago, with a man taking his last breaths as he held his hands out before him, his heartbeats in his ears), there was no excitement in his life.

No one called during dinner. So when the phone rang over roast chicken, they both knew what it was. Dr. Henderson went to answer, and said simply, “I'll be there immediately,” before hanging up.

“Again?” Lucinda lamented, looking at him over her spectacles. “The last one wasn't even a week ago!”

“What can I say except it looks like it's going to be a good year.” He scooped up his plate from the table.

“They never happen in sequence like this,” she noted.

“It's an unusual situation, Lu. It happens.” He set his plate in the sink, paused before continuing. “But I've heard it's different this time.”

“Oh? How so?”

“The guy was dead for a lot longer than any of the others. Heard he was _buried,_ even. So that should increase the chances of a successful resurrection.”

“Oh. And who's turn is it this time?” Lucinda said mildly.

“That kid Renner. He's invested in the cause, but has always followed the rules. Old-timers first, those who spent years with their powers.” Dr. Henderson kissed his wife on the cheek. “Dinner was delicious, sweetheart. I wish you'd come with me.”

“I don't have the stomach for that stuff. You know that.” She pushed her peas around her plate. “You have a good time, though. And be careful.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for violence, kidnapping, general darkness

The girls had already hugged her and cried and were in her bedroom at the moment; Lyla had fallen right asleep, curled up like a puppy, but Anna was still awake, watching the lit-up hall wearily instead instead of the TV. Haswell kissed their foreheads before going downstairs. Scully was in the front room, facing down Haswell ferociously. She'd been panicked when Haswell had burst in, demanding,  _ Where's Mulder? _ even as the girls ran to embrace Haswell. Now she said, “What the hell happened?” in a tight, furious voice. “Why did you leave him behind?” 

Haswell winced. “I didn't mean to leave him behind, we were leaving, he was right behind me when the door slammed shut. It was locked, I couldn't get it open, so I got away so I could get help.”

“What fucking help can we give him when the goddamn police department is involved in this crazy cult?” Scully growled. 

“It'll be a few hours before they…” She saw the emotions playing off of Scully's face and mentally revised. “Before anything happens. We can get to the next town and send in the cops before they hurt him.”

She bit down hard on her lip. “I'm not leaving him.”

“You might have to,” Haswell said, trying to sound comforting. “He’ll have a better chance if he…”

“Goddamnit, I’m not walking away! I’ve done it before and I regret it to this day, so I am not walking away when there’s a chance to save him,” Scully hissed. Her eyes were steel, fierce and angry. 

Haswell bit her lip. She understood, she did - if it were one of the girls or Bobby, she wouldn’t want to leave them either. Hell, she didn’t want to let someone else do the job - she wanted to shoot the reverend and Jeff herself. She was stiff with fury and grief at the news that Bobby had been murdered. But she had her daughters, and she had to keep them safe. “I understand, Scully,” she said. “I do. But I have my daughters, and I have to protect them. Those goddamn scarecrows went after Anna, and there was nothing I could do about it because I was stuffed in a damn closet. I  _ have  _ to keep them safe. I mean, you can understand that, can’t you?”

Scully froze, her face shifting. “Mari…” she said slowly, tearfully. “If you’re saying I don’t care about the baby…” 

“That’s not what I meant,” Haswell said quickly. “I just… want you to understand where I’m coming from.”

Scully’s eyes slid closed; she pinched the bridge of her nose, breathing shakily. Her hand pressed against her extended stomach.

There was suddenly a sound of screeching metal, a large crash. They both turned towards the door, worried, and then Lyla’s voice came floating down the stairs: “Mommy, there's a car crash over at Calvert’s!”

“Mulder,” Scully breathed, and she turned and raced for the door, shoving it open with one hand and reaching for her gun with the other. Haswell yelled at the girls to stay upstairs before following Scully outside. 

The car was up against Calvert’s empty fence, end pointed away from the house. Scully was headed towards it, gun drawn, so Haswell followed. A man was climbing out of the car - not Mulder, or anyone else she recognized, but Scully definitely knew him, she was shouting something at him. By the time Haswell reached them, she could make out their words; Scully was asking how he'd gotten here. “I dunno, I dunno,” the man stammered. “I was on the way here, didn't know how to find it, and I-I blacked out or something.”

_ Oh, shit, another one, _ Haswell thought; the blackout usually meant that Calvert had caught someone else in his web and unwittingly lured them to Calvert Pass, a place that wasn't even on the map.

“What the hell, you…” Scully whispered in confusion. “You blacked out?”

“Have you had a recent near-death experience?” Haswell asked.

The man blinked at her in confusion, like he was seeing her for the first time. “Doggett, this is Deputy Haswell,” Scully explained. She sounded out of sorts, but that was understandable, considering. “Mari, this is Agent Doggett, my… partner.”

“I thought Mulder's your partner.”

“He is,” she said softly.

Doggett was still staring. “What the hell does a near-death experience have to do with anything?”

“It's a long story,” Haswell said. Her eyes had wandered to Calvert’s driveway; it was empty. “Scully, Calvert’s gone.”

She turned, face white and panicked. “Go check?” she whispered. “Please?” She held her gun out. 

Haswell took it, somewhat reluctantly; she was hoping that Jeff wouldn't shoot her if he was still inside. “Go on and fill your friend in. If I don't come back out…” 

“I'll get the girls out of here,” Scully said, nodding. “I promise. Thank you.”

Haswell nodded back; there was nothing else to say. She went to the doorstep and banged on the door. “Jeff, are you in there?” she shouted. No answer. She banged again. “Come out, Jeff! Calvert? I have a gun and I won't hesitate to use it!” She'd hesitated before, when she'd gone to tell him to let Mulder and Scully go, and that had been her mistake. He hadn't killed her husband but he hadn't stopped it either. She wasn't unwilling to hurt him. “Jeff!” she shouted again, banging harder until her palm stung. “Let me in!” Her hand slipped down to the doorknob and the door swung open automatically. 

Haswell turned back to look at Scully, who was watching her. “Be right back,” she called, and went into the house with her gun drawn. “Mulder?” She went through the front hall of the house, gun held protectively out in front of her. “Jeff? Calvert? Is anyone here?” She checked in the kitchen, the dining room, Calvert’s office. All empty. 

She kept calling out for Mulder as she checked the house - opened every door she could find, who knows where they would've put him? By the end of her search, she knew. Of course they wouldn't have kept him here - too obvious, with a cop and an FBI agent right down the street. And there had been too much activity here tonight. She had no idea where they'd take him, though; their usual M.O. involved surprising the victim, she didn't know what they'd do with an in-the-loop FBI agent.

Scully's face lit up when she opened the door and immediately fell when she came out Mulder-less. “He's not in there?” she said warily. 

Haswell shook her head gravely. “I'm sorry, Scully.”

Her fingers knotted together, knuckles turning white. Urgently, she started, “Do you think they… already…”

“No, no, no,” Haswell assured her quickly. “They like to do it at midnight…  _ exactly  _ at midnight. Your autopsy of the Roberts’s confirms time of death to be about midnight, right? Unless they just broke routine with Mulder - and I doubt it - then he still has a few hours.”

"And are ‘they’ the, uh, necromancy cult?” the man, Doggett asked tentatively. There was disbelief in his voice, but he was looking at Scully like he had her back despite it all.

“Yeah, that's them,” Haswell said.

He grimaced. “I can't believe this,” he said of no one in particular. “I _ wouldn't  _ believe it if it weren't for that blackout.”

“Believe it or not, Agent Doggett, these people have Mulder either way,” Scully said briskly. “I hate to put you in this position but can you help me? I can't just let him die…”

“I don't think there's been a time in our partnership where I haven't been helping you chase down Mulder, Agent Scully.” Doggett was clearly trying to joke, but it came out wrong, disjointed.

She looked down at her shoes. “There hasn't, you're right. You don't know how grateful I am for that.” Scully looked up, turning to Haswell. “Mari? Are you...”

“The girls and I are leaving,” she said. She'd already left them alone at the house for longer than she'd liked; they needed to get out, now. “But we'll stop in the next town. We'll send the police. I promise you that.”

Doggett looked between them. “Agent Scully, in your condition maybe you should…”

Scully visibly faltered, pulling at a thread in her sleeve. Her hand went to her stomach. “Not while Mulder's still out here,” she mumbled. “We’ll figure it out; maybe I can wait in the car, be ready to make a quick getaway.” She turned back to Haswell. “Do you have any idea where they'd take him?”

Haswell considered, but she had no earthly idea, really. Besides her unyielding uninterest, she knew this wasn't their typical M.O. “I don't,” she said softly. “I'm sorry.”

Scully's face crumpled a little. Then, all of a sudden, her phone started to ring.

\---

He saw things all at once, a rapid flash of images. A man cradling a woman, hand to her chest, and praying softly. Someone - was that the doctor, Dr. Henderson - was bent over someone prone on the ground, hands pressed to their chest. A heartbeat starting, stopping, fluttering in place but not restarting. The same man from the first image leaning over the man from the picture in Haswell's hallway - Anna and Lyla’s father, it was just like Anna had said - with a rock in his hand.  _ Tell me the secret, you son of a bitch.  _ The rock descended.

The Roberts’s in their kitchen, in their pajamas. Kyle stood in front of Cara, holding up a butcher knife threateningly. The sheriff stood in front of them, his hands held out. Cara started gasping, collapsing against her husband… 

Mulder jolted away, almost falling forward off of whatever he was lying on. His cheek was plastered to some kind of velvety surface, and what seemed to be a church pew was right in front of him. He tried to move his hands and found the motion restricted by rope knotted around them at his back. He kicked out, feet hitting wood, and managed to sit up, ankles untied. He was in a church sanctuary, on a pew. It seemed empty.

Mulder turned back and forth, trying to gage his surroundings. Agitated and frantic, he began twisting his wrists in their bonds.

“Good, you're awake.” He turned, and saw an older version of the man from his dream. The one with the rock and Haswell's husband. The reverend, collar and all. He was walking down the aisle towards Mulder, and he offered him an easy smile. 

Mulder turned clumsily to face him. “You killed Bobby Haswell."

“Well. That's not how I'm usually greeted.” Reverend Greene sat in the pew across the aisle. “I guess you've had some spiritual communication. Not uncommon in these parts, especially not with those who end up at Calvert’s. I suppose you've encountered the scarecrows?”

“I'm a federal agent,” Mulder said, breathing hard. “That means big trouble for you if I die.”

“Oh, we know. We know all about you, Agent Mulder. Your little story almost fooled Dr. Calvert, but Dr. Henderson relayed the details of your doctor's visit, your girlfriend. We looked you up, and there was enough information in the news to fill a book. Your disappearance, your burial, your miraculous resurrection. We've never seen the Mark of Death before, but you definitely have it. That increases your chances, we hear.” 

The man reached out and squeezed Mulder's shoulder; he slid away in disgust. “You're going to kill me,” he said. “Stop my heart in the name of fucking necromancy.”

“Power fades, and valiant efforts are made to bring it back. Consider yourself a sacrificial lamb, if it helps.”

“Biblical metaphors. In a church. How clever,” Mulder said with some disgust. 

“Lazarus was dead for four days, Jesus for three. Maybe the trick is that we didn't look for time gaps. Maybe that was the key all along.”

“Yeah, except there's a little problem with that,” Mulder snapped. “Jesus was dead for three days, and I was dead for three _months._ Besides, I'm the outlier in this little experiment anyway.”

“Which could explain why your chances are greater,” Reverend Greene said good-naturedly. 

“Fuck that. You people should never have started this, let alone keep going! Why the hell didn't you stop when it didn't work?” he growled. 

“We're hardly monsters, Agent. We switch out people who stop the hearts, test them to see whether or not their power remains. We hope each and every one will be successful. We mourn every time it isn't. Do you even know how this all started? I was distraught about the loss of the necromantic power. I felt like it was a gift, and I didn't know why it had left. People had been made so happy by the gift of necromancy.”

“Maybe they never saw  _ Pet Sematary _ ,” Mulder said viciously.

The reverend ignored him. “Necromancy had been fading for years, slowly; telekinesis was weakened, but it did remain. By 1985, it was gone and I was deeply haunted. All the good we could’ve done, gone like that, and we didn’t even know why. My wife - Matty - she came down to find me crying my eyes out at the kitchen table one night, and she offered to do a little experiment with me, to ease my mind. Stop my heart, she said, with telekinesis, and then restart it the same way. Maybe that will answer your questions. Maybe that will save this town.”

“And it didn't work,” Mulder said. “But you kept going anyway.”

“Matty’s death absolutely devastated me. I was determined to find out what I had done wrong. I stopped and tried to restart two hearts, trying something different each time. Of course, when it didn't work, the town was less than happy, the families distraught. So I suggested a solution to benefit us all. We would lure people here who had a variable in their favor: that they had recently died and came back to life. We thought that their success might be more likely to happen again. We would switch out people to do the deed, starting with the people who'd previously had their power the longest. And some people agreed. We set up a group, conducted meetings. We chose Dr. Calvert to set up his practice, as he was the only one whose power had remained throughout it all.”

“Wait,” Mulder said, head spinning. “You mean  _ Calvert  _ can still bring people back to life?”

“And control the weather, and lure people who have never heard of his practice to our little town. He also bonded the souls of the sacrifices to his collection of scarecrows out front. They lingered, you see, even though we couldn't bring them back to their bodies. Dr. Calvert could channel them and he did. They are his spies, informants on the chosen victims. Dr. Calvert serves us, but he is also the most powerful of us all.”

“So why not have him resurrect the victims?” he demanded. “Why leave them dead? Why do that to their families?”

“Oh, we did that, the first two years. Calvert would travel with the member to wherever the victim was staying, and he'd bring them back when the member proved unable to. But the group voted to remove that step. They thought it would interfere with the process, that maybe it took a few days to work.”

“How do you expect that to work if you have them fucking autopsied?” Mulder hissed. He was still methodically twisting his wrists in hope of escape; the skin was chafed and stinging, but the knots held fast. 

“Oh, no one was autopsied before the Roberts. Mari made that up so that you two would involve yourselves, I expect. Most in this town are either naive or don't interfere, but Mari was neither of those things. She felt some sort of moral obligation. Probably because of her husband.” Reverend Greene smiled. “Robert Haswell, now he was truly our savior. He died in ‘93, after we'd already been letting people stay dead for four years. Killing people takes a toll on you, you know, and we were worried that it would never work, that all these people were dying for nothing. We were close to giving up completely when Robert brought his daughter back to life. He gave us hope that someone would have the power eventually. If he’d retained it, who else might?” The reverend smirked, pulling at a loose thread on his clothes. “It’s a shame he had to die, though, and leave behind those two little girls and Mari. Mari got real suspicious, started sniffing around, lectured me about moral obligation to these victims’ families. But still, she was never able to do anything. She knew how outnumbered she was, how dangerous it would be to speak out. And no one moves away from Calvert Pass. Mari never proved to be a problem until you and your girlfriend came along. We were a bit worried at that, you being FBI agents, but imagine our comfort when one of you turned out to have had an NDE - and to have the Mark of Death, no less.”

“You son of a bitch,” Mulder snarled. (He absolutely did not want to die.)

“Call me what you want, Agent Mulder; it makes no difference.” The reverend smiled serenely. “I do have just one question, though. About your girlfriend.”

_ Scully _ , Mulder thought. What did they want with her, did they have her? God, if she was here… “Where is she?” he snapped, frantic. “What do you want with her?”

“Nothing at all, Agent. I can assure you she's not here and we have no desire to hurt her. Especially not with a baby on the way.” Reverend Greene patted his shoulder in what was probably meant to be a comforting motion. “I just wanted to know… will she be a problem? Will she interfere like Kyle Roberts did? Because if she does, I have no guarantee on her safety.”

Mulder froze, fingers pressed awkwardly against the wood. "I don't know,” he said in muted horror. She might hesitate to come because of the baby, but he wasn't sure what choice she'd make in the end. 

The reverend's face fell; he shook his head regretfully, and Mulder scrambled to offer a solution. “Let me call her,” he said quickly. “I can convince her not to come.”

The man raised an eyebrow. “How do I know you won't give away your location?”

Any other time he might, but not now. Not when she was pregnant. He'd still try to escape, but he couldn't depend on Scully for that, not this time. “Because I don't want her to get hurt,” he said, thinking of the baby. 

That answer seemed to satisfy the reverend. He got up and walked to the door, stuck his head out and called, “Calvert? I'm about to call Agent Scully; please allow it to go through.” And then he came back, pulling a cell phone out of his coat. “I assume you know her number?” he asked. 

Mulder gave it to him, and hated himself for it. The reverend dialed, putting it on speakerphone, and set it in his lap. Mulder counted the rings, nervous. He didn't want her to pick up, didn't want to have this conversation, but he wanted to know that she was okay. He half-hoped she'd finally gotten her revenge and ditched  _ him, _ had slipped past the roadblock and was on her way down the mountain. 

And then he heard Scully's voice and his blood froze in his veins. It came through crackling with static, an uncertain, “Hello?”

Mulder opened his mouth to answer, but Reverend Greene grabbed him from behind, clapping one hand over his mouth, effectively muffling her name from his mouth. 

“Mulder?” Scully said on the other end. She sounded almost hopeful;  _ oh, God,  _ Mulder thought, and closed his eyes.

“No, Agent Scully, it's not Mulder. I'm sorry,” said the reverend. 

Her voice shifted, grew steely and strong. “Who are you?”

“Oh… a friend of a friend, you could say,” the reverend chuckled.

She said fiercely, in the same furious voice he'd heard multiple times when he was in danger: “Where is he?”

He squeezed his eyes shut tighter like it might help something.  _ I'm so sorry, Scully. _

“Where's Mulder? What have you done with him?” she hissed, practically shouting. 

“I'm afraid I can't tell you that. I can assure you that I'm looking right at him, though. He looks like he'd like to speak to you.”

“I need proof,” Scully said, and her voice faltered only slightly. “Let me hear that he's alive.”

The reverend moved his hand. “Scully,” Mulder said, and was going to say more before the hand returned, pressing hard.  _ It's okay,  _ he said into the reverend's palm, but it came out a muffled grunt.

“There's your proof, Agent.”

“Let him go,” she said steadily. He could hear her trying to regain control.

“I'm afraid I can't do that either, my dear. I'm sorry about that, I really am.”

“Bullshit, you can't,” said Scully, sounding as strong as he knew she was.

“Maybe I misspoke,” the reverend said. “I meant I won't.” Scully made a sound, almost inaudible, on the other end, but it was enough and it cut Mulder to the core. “Now I'm offering you a chance to get out of here safely. So you’ll need to leave town, right away. No one will stop you or hurt you. I promise you can walk away safe and scot-free.”

“Why would you let me go?” Scully demanded. “I know everything about this cult of yours, and you know I know. Why would you let me leave? I don’t believe you.”

“I can assure you I’m telling the truth, my dear. No one will believe your story, and we’d outnumber anyone who came up here anyway. Besides, we don’t want to kill a young mother. We have no interest in taking your life, or the life of anyone innocent. We had to kill Kyle Roberts because he tried to protect his wife, and we felt great regret over it. We’re warning you to try and prevent that from happening again.”

There was a lengthy pause, and then she said, “I won't leave him here,” but her voice faltered, trembling like a leaf in the wind. She sounded torn, and Mulder knew she was thinking about the baby.

“I'm sorry, but you have to,” Reverend Greene said. “You see, Dr. Scully, we don't  _ want  _ to hurt you… or your baby… but if you interfere, we'll have to.”

_No._ Mulder sunk his teeth into the reverend's palm, and the man yelped and yanked his hand away. “Scully, you have to listen to him, you have to go…” 

Henderson pressed his hand back over Mulder's mouth, muffling his words. “Mulder?” Scully called. Her voice was faltering; she sounded close to tears.

“I'd listen to him,” the reverend said. “For your baby’s sake, if nothing else.”

“If you're letting me go, let him go, too,” she said softly, and it was the closest to pleading he'd ever heard from her. “Please. This is his child, and he was  _ dead _ a few weeks ago.”

“We'll bring him back to you,” the reverend said, and if Mulder didn't know the truth, he'd suspect that it was a promise. “He'll be just fine. We'll let him go as soon as he's breathing, and he can find you. You can go home and live a long, happy life.”

“If it hasn't worked the last seventeen goddamn times, then why do you think it would work now?” she growled. 

“It's almost worked a few times, you know,” he told her. “We've almost been able to restart a few hearts. And Jeff’s never done it before, maybe it will work with him. Besides, the Mark of Death increases the chances.”

If Greene wasn't covering his mouth, Mulder would've asked what the Mark of Death  _ was _ . The grave dirt under his fingernails, the tear tracks on Scully's cheeks? Something ingrained in his skin, his bones? Did he look like a walking zombie? And how did that guarantee that it would work on him when it didn't work on fourteen other people who'd had NDEs?

“You should go, Dr. Scully. Really. We're giving you a good opportunity here, for you and your baby to live.”

“Without my partner?” she snapped. Her voice cracked; she sounded two inches away from sobbing. 

Mulder mumbled something under the reverend's hand, bucking hard against his hold, and his hand moved away from his mouth. “Scully, you have to go,” he said, rushed, panicked. “For the baby.” Scully made a faint choking sound, and he knew she was crying now. “Save yourself, please,” he added, softer. “I can't… if anything happened to you…”

What Scully was thinking went unsaid:  _ if anything happened to  _ you _ , again…  _ “No,” she said softly. She sounded small, vulnerable, like she was falling apart. Something inside him shattered a little.

She was going to go, he knew she would, for the baby, but he wanted to make sure she wouldn't hate herself for it, wanted her to know she was doing the right thing. He tried to come up with something to comfort her. “You'll get through this, Scully, I know you will,” he said, softly. “You're the strongest person I know. And you're going to be the best mother in the world.”

Silence except for Scully's husky breathing. The reverend, blessedly enough, said nothing. “I love you,” she said, unsteady. “I… my  _ god _ .” Mulder held his breath, tried to memorize the sound of her voice. She took a few more shaky breaths. He opened his mouth to tell her he loved her. 

The reverend hung up, the click like the nails on his coffin. Mulder took a sharp breath and tried not to cry. 

“I'm sorry about that, Agent Mulder,” the reverend said, shoving him back on the pew as he stood. “I know that must've been hard for you.”

His hands hit the wood hard and he winced. “You don't know,” he muttered, staring hard at a dark spot on the carpet until the burn of tears blurred his vision. The image of Scully, her voice telling him she loved him, was still clear ad solid in his mind. He never wanted it to fade. He would hold onto her until the end. “You don't have a fucking clue.”

\---

After the phone call, they sat in the sanctuary in silence for what must've been an hour. The reverend sat right beside him, making escape impossible. Mulder kept twisting his hands in their bonds, and nothing kept happening; he stayed stubbornly and tightly bound. 

Suddenly, the door at the back of the sanctuary opened and Dr. Henderson, the doctor Scully had taken him to, entered. Astonishment washed over him - he knew that several people were involved, but it was still a surprise to see the man who’d examined him when they first got to town here, among people who were going to kill him. It suddenly made sense that he guessed about Mulder’s NDE, recommended Mulder go to Calvert. They’d been doomed from the second they rolled into town, whether he’d found the Roberts’s or not.

The reverend stood to meet Henderson and the two of them talked in a low tone that Mulder couldn't understand. Mulder scanned the room for another way out and spotted a door near the front. Possibly a little insane and definitely determined to get away, he got to his feet and sprinted towards the other door.

It didn't work. Of course he didn't get far. His bound hands threw him off, and a second later someone was crashing into him. Henderson. He pinned Mulder painfully to the ground, putting pressure on his neck. Mulder grunted in pain. There was the click of a gun muzzle at his temple. “I'd suggest you don't try that again, Agent Mulder,” Henderson said, pressing down on his neck. Mulder gasped, coughed. “We're not as young as we once were.”

“Can you watch him?” the reverend said somewhere behind them. As if Mulder were an unruly child instead of a prisoner by cultists. “I need to go deal with this.”

“Certainly.” Henderson’s hand curled into the back of Mulder's shirt and yanked him to his feet; he staggered, gasping in breaths, but Henderson held him in place. 

The reverend nodded at them before turning and exiting the room. Henderson shoved Mulder down on another pew and sat beside him, gun still to his head. “Sorry for the unpleasant circumstances,” he said cheerfully. “We're not used to holding people, you see.”

Mulder said nothing. There was nothing to say. They sat in silence like he and the reverend had, except this time there was a gun to his head. Definitely no hope of escape. Being shot, without medical attention, was definitely something he couldn’t come back from. At least this necromancy thing had a small chance.

And then, all of a sudden, the lights dimmed out of nowhere. 

Mulder tensed, trying to prepare himself for a fight. Henderson’s hand came down on his shoulder and squeezed: a warning. “Hold still,” he said. “It’ll all be over in a few minutes.” He held his breath so he wouldn’t gasp or scream; were they going to kill him right  _ here _ ? 

The candles sprang to life around the room, tiny flames lighting up the dark cavern of the sanctuary. The shadows flickered eerily along the wall. At the back end of the sanctuary, the door scraped open and people started filing in. “What’s going on?” Mulder hissed, afraid and hating his fear. This reminded him too much of the Chaco Chicken case, or the devil-worshipping PTA. He was terrified of what would happen next.

“Nothing,” Henderson said calmly, moving the gun from Mulder's head. It was clear he wouldn't be running away. “We’ve just never had an opportunity to meet the sacrifice like this, and they wanted to see you. The Mark of Death makes you special in their eyes.”

People kept filing in. They looked absurdly normal, like the other cases they’d seen; dressed in plainclothes, coats and hats, some even in pajama pants or curlers. All ages, some as young as college, some old enough to have canes and walkers. He couldn’t gauge how many; at least fifty, he thought. It wasn’t a too-large chunk of the 747, but it was enough. He swallowed, throat dry. 

Henderson hooked his hands under Mulder’s shoulders and hauled him up. “Is that him?” an acne-faced guy in the front asked. 

“This is him,” Henderson said. “According to the news, he disappeared for three months, was returned dead, and was buried for three months before he came back to life.” Some collective gasps and “Wow”s came from the ground.

Of course the Bureau would leave the whole alien abduction factor out of it. Mulder was more scared at dying at the hands of necromantic cultists in the moment, but it still irritated him to hear it trivialized. The way Henderson said it made it sound like nothing. The fear from the ship came rushing through his head on top of everything, and he closed his eyes, swaying slightly. God, he couldn’t catch a break, could he? He was walking around with a giant target on his back:  _ Shoot here _ . 

Henderson and the crowd said some more things but Mulder barely heard them. He was lost within in his head, drowning everything out. He tried to hook his thumb in the hook of the knots, but it slipped over it uselessly. He worked the ropes back and forth to no avail. The words blurred together, even as Henderson started shuffling him forward, down the aisle; he didn’t hear a word of the crowd’s whispers until one phrase popped out at him: “What about the other one?”

Mulder jolted. “Other one? What other one?” he demanded.

“It’s time we were going, Agent Mulder,” Henderson said, steering him towards the door. “I’m afraid it’s time,” he called out to the group.

“Who’s the other? Is it Scully? You said you’d let her go!” he snarled, almost shouting. He was filled with an uncanny fury.

“It’s not Agent Scully. We keep our promises, Mulder.” They turned down the dark halls of the church and towards the door. 

“Who is it, then? Is it Haswell?” They moved outside of the church, into the cold.

“Mari Haswell doesn’t fit the M.O. Don’t worry about who the other is.”

Henderson moved him, shoving him out back towards a police car that must've been Jeff’s by a hand on the rope around his wrists. Mulder stumbled hard, almost falling onto the seat, but he managed to stay upright and step into the car with some measure of dignity left. He slid across the seat, watching Henderson warily. The door slammed shut and he was alone.

The silence seemed to drive things forward: he was a captive, and he was going to die. There was no escape. He thought for a wild minute,  _ maybe they're right, maybe I'll survive,  _ and then nausea climbed up his throat and he decided he didn't want to bank on that hope. He twisted his wrists hard in the ropes, straining his numb fingers to try to reach the knots, but it was useless: they'd tied him tightly enough that his hands were falling asleep, and there was no way to loosen the knots without help, nothing to cut them with. He pressed his forehead to the cold window and tried not to vomit. 

God, he wished he'd done something differently with the short amount of time he'd had back on Earth. Spent less time arguing with Scully, less time running headlong into danger. He never should've come to North Carolina, never should've offered to drive. They should've gone home, should have climbed in bed together and napped, woken up and started figuring out their lives together. He should've grabbed on and never let go. He should've thought of a name for the kid, embraced impending fatherhood. Read  _ What To Expect When You’re Expecting _ , maybe. He'd been ready at one point, so that feeling should've been easy enough to recapture. His brief hiatus from his time in the ground had been massively unsatisfying; he got a week of panic and arguments and goddamn walking scarecrows, and not enough time with Scully. Never enough time with Scully. He'd never see the Gunmen again, never tell Skinner that Oregon wasn't his fault, never see his fish again.  He hadn't known he was dying, before, on the ship, and he'd more or less tried to forget he was dying of a brain disease last year. (Which was easy enough, considering how great his life had been for a little while there at the end.) But now? He was staring death right in the face - not for the first time, but for the first time since he’d been on the other side - and he was terrified to go back.

The door to the back of the police car opened and Mulder tensed for a fight but someone was shoved in before he could. In the front, Jeff Renner crawled in behind the steering wheel. 

It took a minute for him to recognize his fellow captive: it was The New Partner, Agent Doggett. Who was now sharing his prelude to potential death (the second one? Third one? Who the hell kept track anymore?), despite them never having a conversation outside of “it's nice to meet you, Agent Scully's told me a lot about you” and “thank you for taking my job and stealing my partner”. (Not a verbatim quote on Mulder's part; it had been mostly implied.)

“Agent Doggett?” Mulder said with some disbelief. 

Doggett was trying to adjust himself in the seat, to sit upright, a task with his hands bound behind him. “I'd say it's good to see you again, Agent Mulder, but we never seem to meet under the most ideal circumstances.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Agent Scully's phone call, earlier today? I got enough from it to figure out where you were. But on the way up here, something happened, I… I dunno, blacked out or something. I woke up outside the house of that NDE counselor and ran into Agent Scully. The local cop, Haswell, took her kids for help, and Scully and I…” 

“What the hell, what happened?” Mulder demanded. “Where's Scully?”

“She's fine, she's fine,” Doggett gasped, trying to catch his breath. “They caught us outside that therapist's house, locked Scully inside. They didn't touch her, though, I wouldn't let them.”

Mulder stared at him for a minute while he caught his breath. “They locked her up?” Doggett didn't say anything. He turned and clumsily pounded on the divider with his knee. “Jeff! Hey, Renner, you jackass! Let her go!” 

Jeff turned, a look of mock confusion on his face.

He was never going to see Scully again, never going to see his kid. “Let her go!” he shouted. “You said she could leave, you said you wouldn't hurt her!”

Jeff opened the divider a little. “I'll let her go,” he said. “As soon as this is all over, I will. I promise you that, Agent Mulder. She won't be hurt, we just don't want her to interfere. It'll be over within the hour.”

“Let her go  _ now, _ goddamnit!” He kicked the wall furiously. “She's  _ pregnant. _ ”

“Which is exactly why we're keeping her here.” Jeff smiled sweetly. “We wouldn't want her to interfere… lest what happened to Kyle Roberts or the Youngs happen to her.”

Red clouded Mulder's vision for a minute, and he kicked the wall again viciously. “From what I understand about this bullshit, I'll stick around in one form or another after you've stopped my heart. If you hurt her… if you lay one hand on her… I will fucking kill you.”

“Don't be ridiculous, Agent Mulder.” Jeff was cheerful, grinning wider and toothily at him. “You'll be just fine after I stop your heart. Just fine. I guarantee it.” And then he shut the divider.

Breathing hard with fury, Mulder leaned back against the seat. His hands were tied, there was nothing he could do. Even if he and Doggett could free each other from their bonds, they were surrounded by people. They wouldn’t make it off the property. There was no way out. He was going to die for the second time in three months. He hadn't even gotten a week back. It was like some twisted horror story, he got a few last days with the love of his life, found out he had a kid, and now he was being called back to the ground. Some kind of poetry. 

Doggett, he realized. What the hell was Doggett doing here? 

“Doggett?” he said out loud. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Doggett looked at him like he was crazy, shrugged his shoulders in a gesturing type of way. “Same as you, I figure. I came up here to try and help based on Scully's phone call…” 

“No,” said Mulder. “I mean, why are they taking you along? Why didn't they lock you up with Scully?”

Doggett blinked, uncertain. He looked down at his black, shiny shoes. “The soul eater,” he said finally, and Mulder had to repress a gasp of his own. “When I was investigating your disappearance, tracking your movements… I found it. I got shot, I was buried… and the soul eater brought me back. He died because of that. Somehow, these… people could sense that experience. Scully said they lured me here.” His voice was fraught with disbelief.

Mulder was more than astonished, and he felt a sense of solidarity with the man. They'd both been buried, both knew what it was like to inhale and feel dirt, to scratch at the quilts above because you had to get to the surface, to  _ breathe _ . “I'm… sorry,” he said awkwardly.

Doggett shrugged uncomfortably. “It happened. Now I guess I'm going to get killed for it.” He sounded bitter and scared and in disbelief. Scully had said he didn't believe in these things; maybe he wasn’t the type to believe unless it was staring him right in the face. When it seemed undeniable. 

He and Scully had an uncanny ability to last-minute-escape danger. He wondered if Doggett would have the same ability. 

The door in the front opened, and the reverend slid into the front. Henderson opened the door to the back on Doggett’s side. “Scoot over, boys,” he said cheerfully. “Reverend Greene and I are coming along to keep you under control for Jeff. We've never killed FBI agents before.”

Mulder clenched his jaw as he slid over to make room for Doggett. His wrists and hands were bloodless, trapped between his back and the seat. Nausea rolled in his stomach as the car started moving. He did not want to die.

“Everyone hold on,” Jeff called as the car started moving. “By the time we get to where we're going, it'll be almost midnight.”

\---

They drove for almost twenty minutes, into the inky dark woods, going bumpily over the snow. No one spoke. Mulder leaned his head against the window and watched the trees go by. He thought about Scully's face when he'd woken up, the saddened awe on her face, the way she'd broken down when he joked about not remembering her, the way she'd smiled when she found out he was okay. He thought about her in the rain, head thrown back in laughter, so young and innocent and stupid in the way he'd been back then. Hell, they both still were. He thought about his family, his mother and father and sister. He wondered if he'd found them in whatever came next, if he'd find them again. He thought about the baby. The car wove its way around the trees, silent. 

When the car stopped, Henderson cocked his gun, aiming it at Mulder and Doggett’s heads. Neither of them moved; Mulder turned to face them and he exchanged an anxious look. He barely knew the man, they didn't have much in common besides being Scully's partner and having been dead. But he didn't want to watch the man die. 

Henderson seized a handful of Doggett’s jacket and hauled him out of the car, pressing the gun to his skull. He swallowed, fear perceptible on his face. Behind Mulder, the door opened and someone pulled him out in a similar motion, gun and all. He saw the reverend walking ahead of them; so it was Jeff who had him. The night was dark, the moon was gone. They walked further. 

They walked until they reached running water, invisible in the dark. “Welcome to Calvert Pass Spring,” the reverend said cheerily. “We used to drink straight from the spring before the water treatment plant came to town, you know.”

“Sorry if I'm not particularly interested in a tour of the place you're going to kill me in,” Doggett said with a dry viciousness. Dr. Henderson smacked him hard on the shoulder.

“All right, so we'll get right to the killing part,” Jeff said, and Mulder winced, squeezing his eyes shut.

“Stop!” 

The source of the voice was unexpected. A second later, Calvert came out of the trees with a gun. Jeff’s arm tightened around Mulder's chest, pressing the gun hard into his skull. The reverend aimed his own gun. “Terrence,” he said cautiously. “What are you doing?”

“This has to stop, Sam.” He cocked his gun. “This can't go on, we can't keep killing people.”

“You never had a problem with it the other times,” Henderson said. “After you stopped coming to the scenes with us…” 

“It never stopped bothering me. Not since the beginning, not after you stopped letting me bring the victims back.” Calvert’s hands were shaking around the gun. “I was their damn therapist, I _knew_ them. These people had lives, families! Cara and Kyle Roberts had just renewed their vows and were going on a second honeymoon. Layla Tanner had a family, a sick mother she was caring for. You killed a seventeen-year-old boy, for Christ's sake!”

“It was for the greater good,” the reverend said.

“ _ Fuck  _ the greater good! It didn't work the other times, even with you switching out people. What makes you think that the next one will be able to do what all of you aren't?”

“Robert Haswell was proof.”

“Robert Haswell was a damn anomaly, and you killed him before you could find out the truth about how he saved his daughter. Now you're holding two FBI agents captive, and one of them is about to be a father. You can’t do this! Let them go.”

“Terrence, put down the gun,” Henderson said. “We'll talk about it, it'll be fine. Agent Mulder over here has a greater chance of survival, you know that. You told us that, you sent the scarecrows to find out.”

“The scarecrows were a goddamn mistake. I was condemning these people to be trapped here forever, after everything else I did to them. And Anna Haswell burned them.” Calvert’s hands were still trembling; he laughed, off-kilter. “She burned all of them. They're gone.”

“Terrence, you're unstable…” Henderson tried. 

“Fuck unstable, Tom! I'm going to stop this.” He turned and aimed at the reverend, the only one not holding someone else captive. 

Jeff shot Calvert. 

Mulder flinched, tried to pull away from the gunshot and the smell of the powder that was right next to him, but Jeff was gripping him too tightly, swinging the gun back around to press against his skull. Calvert fell, plunging backwards into the river that ran behind them. He submerged in the water, icy liquid creeping over his face and bloody torso. 

“Sorry we can't bring you back, old man,” Henderson said. “But you wouldn't tell us your secret.” 

Mulder thought he was going to vomit. He struggled hard against Jeff, kicking him hard in the shin, but the man's grip only tightened. “What the hell?” Doggett was shouting. “Why the fuck did you shoot him?”

“He's thought he's better than us for too long now,” the reverend said. “I'll never understand why he and Bobby Haswell were the only ones to retain the power.”

“You people are crazy!” Doggett shouted, and as dire as the situation was, Mulder wanted to say,  _ Welcome to the X-Files.  _ This wasn't the first time he'd been on the sacrificial altar. He or Scully had almost been killed by some crazy, small-town cause more times than he could remember. But somehow this felt more urgent. More real. (Maybe it was an in-the-moment thing; he desperately hoped this memory would be just that: another faded memory he could look back on someday.)

“Oh, we've heard that one before,” Henderson said, holding him in place. “Plenty.”

The reverend was looking at Jeff with a softness Mulder generally associated with a teacher encouraging a kid to try something. “Jeff, you ready?”

“Yeah,” Jeff said, uncertainly, and he sounded the part of the kid. “Who's first?”

Doggett looked at Mulder and Mulder looked at Doggett. If he was more noble, he might’ve volunteered himself, but there was nothing noble about this. He didn't want to die. But even though he barely knew Doggett and kind of resented him for his time on the X-Files, he didn't want him to die either. Doggett had saved Scully's life, had come tearing up to North Carolina after one crazy phone call. He couldn't throw him under the bus.

They said nothing. “No one going to volunteer?” the reverend scoffed. “Have some dignity, men.”

_ There's no dignity in this,  _ Mulder thought.  _ You're going to kill us and there's nothing we can do. We’ve already died; we don’t want to see what’s on the other side. _

“I'll choose,” Jeff said firmly. “I think Doggett should go first, since he doesn't have the…”

“Look,” Henderson said suddenly, a wavering voice. And pointed towards the river.

Mulder followed his finger towards the water where they'd dumped Calvert. But Calvert was dead, wasn't bleeding out. He was sitting up in the water, blood slowing to a trickle. He was pulling himself onto the bank, fumbling for the gun he had dropped when he'd been shot.

“It's a miracle,” the reverend whispered. Doggett was staring in disbelief; he'd stopped struggling. Jeff was silent, but he kept the gun at Mulder's temple. Mulder couldn't gage whether his grip on the trigger had loosened or not.

“Terrence,” Henderson said. “How did you… do your powers extend to yourself? Can you revive yourself?”

“It was the water, you sons of bitches,” Calvert said, and aimed the gun.

“Don't do anything stupid, Calvert,” the reverend warned. He raised his hands, slowly. “What about the water?”

“I retained my power because I drank the untreated water,” Calvert said. “I figured it out. The powers started fading when the water treatment plant arrived. I refused to drink the treated water, I claimed goddamn tradition, I paid for a pipeline of untreated water straight to my house. I gave Bobby a drink from my cannister - water from  _ my  _ source, straight from the spring, like my family has always done - and he brought Anna back to life. Telekinesis was the only thing that survived because it was the weaker, but necromancy faded out completely. I can't believe no one figured it out sooner.” He swung the gun around to point at Jeff - and by default, Mulder. 

Sirens wailed in the distance. “Jeff?” Henderson called, panicked. “Jeff, are those ours? Our sirens? Our police?”

“I don't know, I don't fucking know!” Jeff was shaking with the fear, he assumed, of knowing he was going to be killed. He pressed the gun into Mulder's skull. “I'll kill him,” he warned. “I'll make sure he doesn't come back.”

A gun fired and Mulder froze, tensing up, his muscles useless and his breaths ragged. It took him a moment to realize he hadn't been shot. He couldn't move. Behind him, Jeff yelped, dropping his gun to the ground. The hand that was holding Mulder shot to his arm, where the bullets had hit. Mulder stumbled a few steps before he saw the reverend pointing another gun at him. 

“Agent Mulder!” Doggett was calling. “Agent Mulder?” 

Mulder choked on the words that tried to come up, but he managed a small, “I'm fine.” He was still immobile; his eyes were on Calvert. 

Calvert looked sadly between them, shifting his gun between Jeff and the reverend and Henderson. “I should've saved them,” he said. “I should've saved every one of them. I had the power to… but the only person I've saved since they made me stop is Anna.” 

“Don't do anything stupid, Calvert,” Henderson warned. Jeff was breathing raggedly, whimpered. His blood stained the snow. “This is too long in the making. You can't just shoot us and end it. You have a chance to move on, keep living.”

“You killed me, Tom; forgive me if I don't particularly trust you.” Calvert aimed at Henderson’s head. “Let the men go. Let them go, and I'll take the gun off of you. You can drink the water, regain your powers.”

The reverend was shaking his head, but something shifted on Henderson’s face and he shoved Doggett forward, hard. “Go,” he said.

“What are you doing, Tom?” the reverend demanded. 

“Take the gun off them. Don't you see? This is our  _ chance,  _ we saw him come to life, we know the water works!” Henderson was ecstatic, eyes lit up. “Go,” he said to Mulder and Doggett. “Run away. Get out of here.”

Doggett met Mulder's eyes. The two turned away from the men, the river, and stumbled towards the sirens. His gait was off because of his bound hands, but they didn't have time to stop and free themselves. The two kept going in silence, past the trees and towards the blue and red lights. The police cars had a different town on the side, and Mulder breathed a sigh of relief: they were safe, he'd see Scully again. 

Behind them, there was a series of shots.


	8. Chapter 8

Doggett was faster than him somehow, and Mulder resented it. He made it to the house first, far ahead. Mulder could hear the sound of the wood cracking, the door breaking in. He came out of the trees just as Doggett went in the door. And then Scully's frantic voice: “What happened? John, where is he?”

“Scully!” he shouted, running faster, flailing his arms in his struggle to peel off his coat. (His hands were near useless, all pins and needles.) He was frantic, he had to see her.

She came out of the house, looking smaller than ever in her oversized coat. He finally managed to get his coat off and wrapped her in it; he couldn't get it out of his head that she was cold, and she and the baby needed to be warmed up. “Are you okay? Is the baby okay?” he asked, pushing hair off of her forehead with trembling hands. His thumb smoothed her cheek, gently like she might break.

She reached out and grabbed him, yanking him close. Her fingernails dug into his back, and he gripped her just as tightly with one hand curling into her hair and the other finding her stomach. “Fuck you,” she mumbled tearfully into his chest. “Fuck you, I thought I’d never see you again, you fucking asshole.”

He laughed shakily and kissed the top of her head. “Love you too, Scully,” he said, absently rocking her back and forth. 

Scully made a choking sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough. “You're an idiot,” she mumbled, sniffling into his chest. She pressed the top of her head into the crook of his neck and he closed his eyes, balling his hands into the back of her jacket. 

She pulled away, fingers running through his hair as she checked for injuries. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?” She cradled a wrist in her free hand, looking down at the rope burns along it. Her hand brushed against the side of his coat, and her palm came back with smears of red. Her eyes widened. 

“I'm fine,” he said quickly. “It's a long story, but it's not my blood. I promise.”

She looked down at his hand. Her thumb caressed the underside of his wrist, where his pulse was beating, the sore spots under her skin. Her other hand curled around the back of his neck, moving his head downwards so she could press a lingering kiss to his forehead. “I'm so glad you're safe,” she whispered.

\---

Scully took one look at Doggett, who was quiet and shivering in the cold, and declared that she'd drive. “Scully, you've gotta be tired,” Mulder said worriedly. He felt her forehead. “Is this much activity okay for you? Or the baby? Should you be resting?"

She looked at him like he was crazy. “I'm fine. I'm not the one who was running around in the woods all night.” She made him take his coat back and went to check on Doggett. A few minutes later, they were on their way with the heater blasting. Doggett climbed into the passenger seat, Mulder taking shotgun. It was dumb, but he wanted to be near Scully. In fact, he didn't really plan on leaving her anytime soon. Maybe never again.

“John… Agent Doggett…” Scully said awkwardly as they wove through the streets. Police cars wailed along the roads, sirens flashing. Mulder had no idea how many people Haswell had sent. He hoped there were hundreds of them. “I'm so sorry I got you involved in this. I don't know how to thank you for coming after us.”

“Of course, Agent Scully, that's my job. You're my…” Doggett stopped mid-sentence, eyes darting to Mulder. The end of the sentence went unspoken, but everyone knew what it was. 

You couldn't almost die with someone and come out without forming some kind of bond. Mulder barely knew Doggett, but he'd walked to his death with the man. And he'd protected Scully when Mulder couldn't; he felt like he owed him something. At the very least, he could let him off the hook in the jealousy and bitterness department. “I'll repay the favor if you ever need it,” he said, turning back in his seat. “Thank you for having Scully's back all this time that I was gone.”

It came out jilted and awkward but for once in his life, he really meant it. Doggett nodded at him, added an awkward, “You're welcome.” It seemed like enough, for now; when Mulder turned to face front, he saw a small smile on Scully's face.

Doggett had to flash his badge and mention that he was one of the FBI agents who'd been held hostage at least three times, but they finally got out of Calvert Pass. (“Good riddance,” Mulder muttered as they passed the sign he'd woken up in front of a week ago. It felt like forever. Scully shuddered, almost inaudibly, as they whizzed past.)

The snow vanished after a few minutes, and Scully relaxed beside him in the driver's seat. Mulder reached out and took her hand, kissing the back of it. He was still overwhelmed with relief - they were okay, they'd made it. A few minutes more of driving and the cold vanished into a slight chill. The three of them wordlessly shed their coats, Mulder untangling Scully's one arm at a time. Mulder flipped the heat off as they pulled into the next town, the one that matched the police cars that had come to Calvert Pass; he didn't let go of Scully's hand the entire time.

They went to the police station first, at three in the fucking morning. Anna and Lyla were curled up asleep in the hard plastic chairs, covered with musty blankets. Haswell was sitting beside them, and she scrambled to her feet when they entered. “You're okay!” she blurted, looking embarrassed. “I didn't know…”

“The police showed up just as Calvert came back from the dead, pointed a gun at Jeff Renner, Dr. Henderson, and Reverend Greene, and convinced him to let us go,” Mulder said. “Thanks for sending them, by the way.”

Haswell's brow furrowed. “How… Calvert came back from the dead? But that's not possible."

“I saw it,” Doggett said, in a half-begrudging way. 

“Calvert said it was the water,” said Mulder. “Jeff shot him and he fell into the spring. He woke up a few minutes later and said he'd figured out it was the untreated water. He said he was the only one who had been drinking it all these years, and that he gave your husband a drink from his cannister right before he brought back Anna.”

“That makes sense,” said Scully, suddenly. Mulder looked at her in surprise; they hadn't discussed what had happened in the woods on the way down the mountain. “Lyla’s report,” she said to Mulder. “The water treatment plant was established in 1974, remember? And the powers faded over time until they vanished in 1985."

“Fuck,” Haswell hissed out, collapsing into a chair. “If I'd known…” She stroked Anna's head, hands shaking.

“There was no way to know,” Scully offered, some attempt at comfort. 

“There's a lot of things I regret here,” she muttered. “I should probably be arrested for my silence.”

“It wasn't your fault,” Mulder said. “You saw what they did to Kyle Roberts, the Youngs… they would've killed you if you'd acted out. The reverend confirmed it... he said no one moves away from Calvert Pass. And you had two little girls to protect."

“If you'd tried to stop them, there wouldn't have been anyone to protect your daughters,” Scully added. 

Haswell was watching Lyla and Anna sleep, a distant look in her eyes. “I guess you're right,” she murmured. 

Scully put a hand on her shoulder. “I don't know how to thank you for making sure we got out,” she said thickly.

“I didn't do much, Scully.” Haswell looked up at them, her jaw clenched in determination. “Just tell me that Sam Greene and Jeff Renner got what they deserved.”

Mulder remembered the gunshots he'd heard when he and Doggett were running away. He didn't know who had fired, or why, but he had no doubt some kind of justice was served. The spirits of Cara Roberts and Bobby Haswell and all the others could rest easy. “Yeah,” he said. “They did.”

\---

The police took their statements as quickly as possible, but it still took too long. Lyla and Anna never woke up, and Scully fell asleep against Mulder's shoulder. They were finally finished some time around six in the morning, and the cop recommended a hotel down the street. Mulder figured they could sleep for an indefinite amount of time and decide what to do from there. Haswell and the kids and Doggett all got rooms as well and blearily made their way to them. Doggett shook his and Scully's hand before disappearing into his room.

Mulder fumbled for the key card and let them into the dark room, carrying their overnight bags. (They'd hardly planned to spend several days in a crazy, necromantic town.) “Thank god for central heating,” Scully murmured as they entered. After spending hours on end in the cold, the warmth emitting from the radiator was near heavenly.

His hand brushed against her waist as he turned to close the door and he leaned down and kissed her, fierce and full of relief. She rose on tiptoes to respond, her arms wrapping around his neck. He pulled her as close as possible, hugging her tightly, burying his face in the crook of her shoulder. “We're okay,” she whispered, her palms pressing into his back. 

“We are.” He kissed her collarbone before lifting his head to look at her. “I'm going to go take a shower real quick, okay? Get some sleep, I'll be out in a second.”

“Mulder, wait.” Her hand slipped into his. “We need to talk,” she said quietly. 

He turned to face her, shadows falling across her face. The dark brought back memories of the night before with the scarecrows and he shuddered, fumbling for the light switch. “I'm not trying to put it off…” he said cautiously. “… but aren't you tired? It's been a long couple of days.”

“I know,” she said. She sniffled a little, wiping her eyes. “I just… I need to do this now.”

“Okay,” said Mulder. “Okay.” He tugged her hand towards the bed. They sat across from each other, knees brushing. 

Scully sniffled again, rubbing the back of his hand with her thumb. “I don't… you can't keep doing what you did tonight.”

“I'm sorry I called you,” he whispered. “I just… they said they'd hurt you if you interfered, and the baby…” 

“I understand why you did it,” she interrupted him, her voice trembling beams of steel. She was always the strongest person he knew. “It's just that I've seen it before.”

“What do you mean?”

“You act like your life is some cavalier thing, you-you're willing to do anything in your power to help me if I need it but you don't seem to give a shit about yours half the time.”

“That's not true…”

“Modell,” she said steadily. “You held back with me but you had no trouble pulling the trigger on yourself. Alaska, you left me behind to protect me and ran straight into danger, you would've died if I hadn't showed up in that emergency room…”

“That's not fair,” he protested. “That all happened years ago.”

Scully seemed to be on some kind of role. “That time with Bremer, you didn't tell me what was going on. Amy and David Cassandra, the ketamine… the goddamn brain disease…”

“Scully…”

“And you just came back from the goddamn dead and it's still more of the same. ‘Scully, you have to go; Scully, save yourself’...” 

“Scully, you are  _ pregnant _ ,” he hissed. “If the circumstances had been different, I would never have made that phone call. I know you can handle yourself.”

“Would you have not made that phone call if I hadn't been pregnant?" she hissed. “Considering the circumstances, that they threatened to kill me, would you?”

He opened his mouth, closed it. She was right; he wouldn't have. 

“You have to stop being some kind of martyr, Mulder. Sometimes…” Her chin trembled. “Sometimes you have to put yourself first. Sometimes there are more important things.” Her free hand brushed her stomach. 

“This isn't about tonight,” he said, realizing. “This is about me keeping my disease from you. This is about me leaving you behind to go to Oregon.”

“Maybe it is,” she said quietly. 

He realized in the moment that he was still holding her hand; he squeezed it, looking down at their intertwined fingers. “I'm not sure what you want me to say, Scully,” he mumbled. “It happened. I wish I could take it back, although it might have ultimately been for the better considering what happened with my health. And tonight… I'm sorry for tonight, but I didn't do it on purpose. I was trying to protect Haswell, and I was trying to protect you and the baby. You can't fault me for that, not this time. Not when the baby factors in.”

“I can't, you're right,” she said, chewing at her lower lip. “I'm mad about tonight, but it's irrational. You're okay, and that's what matters.”

“But you're also mad about the disease,” he promoted. 

“That you didn't tell me, yes,” she said. “That you felt you had to keep that from me… to spare my feelings… and for going to Oregon, even though that's irrational, too. For walking into that light even though you knew I was home sick. You couldn't have known I collapsed…”

He'd already closed his eyes under the weight of it all, and he brought her hand up against his cheek, nearly shaking under her cool skin. “I'm so sorry,” he whispered. “I am. I fucked up, and I regret it, and not just because of all the pain that resulted from it. I never would've left you if I'd known you were pregnant. I shouldn't have left you when you were sick. I'm so sorry.”

“I know,” Scully said, sniffling a little. She kissed his cheek. “I know you are.”

He kissed the side of her hand, the base of her thumb. “So what…”

“I don't know. You say you want to be a parent with me, and you don't know how much I want that. But if you keep doing this… acting like your life doesn't matter… then I don't know if I can.”

He stroked her palm with his thumb. “So… what are you saying? Do you want me to quit the FBI?”

“Mulder, I don't even know that I want to completely quit the FBI… or the X-Files. Step away for a while, definitely, but after that I don't know. I don't necessarily want you to quit - although if that's what you want, of course you can. I just want…” She sighed. “I just don't want to constantly be worried about you. It's true that people get hurt doing these things, but you and I seem to have the record. And this tendency of yours to thoughtlessly put yourself in danger… it can't go on. Not if we're going to be parents. You can't keep health issues from me, or walk blindly into a case of alien abduction, or offer yourself up on a silver platter. I can't take it anymore.” 

He kissed the tip of her fingers. “Okay.”

She blinked in surprise, like she hadn't expected him to say that. “Okay?”

Almost dying constantly took something of a toll on a person. He couldn't do it anymore. His coffin, his grave, the faint memories of being dead, still loomed large in his mind. He hated that feeling. He wanted to be as far away from it as possible. The truth was out there, but it had taken too much from him, from Scully.  _ There’s so much more than this, _ he’d told Scully in Oregon, and there was. “Okay,” he said. “This is what I want. I've wanted it since you asked me to be the father of your child.” She smiled a little, practically glowing in the dark. “This is enough right now,” he added. “We can figure out everything else later. All I need right now is you and the kid.”

“I love you,” she whispered. She shifted closer to him on the bed, leaning into him. 

“That's the third time you've said that,” he mumbled into her hair.

She made a small sound of amusement against his shirt. “You've kept score?” 

“They've all been pretty memorable, Scully.” He kissed her hairline.

“If we're keeping score, then we're tied at the moment. You've said it three times.”

“Only three?” He'd thought it so much that it felt like a million times. 

“In the hospital after the Bermuda Triangle. Before you left for Oregon. A few hours ago on Calvert’s porch.”

“Mm,” he murmured. “I love you.”

She swatted him lightly. “You're just doing that so you're ahead.”

“No, I'm not. That was to the baby.”

“Hmm. Well, the baby loves you, too.” 

“I'm glad.” He kissed her head. “I'm going to go take a shower, okay? Can we talk about this more later?”

“Okay.” She kissed him quickly before he got up. “Come back to bed after.”

“I will.” He headed for the bathroom. Scully went for the overnight bags, even though it was technically morning. He turned to watch her at the door, her hair falling across her cheeks like auburn waves. “I love you, Scully,” he said. 

She smiled without looking at him. "I love you too. Now shut up and take your shower. I'll have plenty of time to win, you know.”

"That's what you think," he said, teasing. Now, in the moment, it felt like they had all the time in the world.

\---

Skinner sent out some other agents to handle the investigation, including a woman Scully knew from during Mulder's disappearance named Monica Reyes. Doggett volunteered to stay and offer his insight. Skinner insisted that Mulder and Scully come home. “You can call up here if they need your help,” he said, and they both thought that was a good idea, all things considered.

Haswell was doing something similar - she offered her assistance as much as possible, but otherwise, she was taking her daughters to go see their grandparents. “Bobby’s family,” she told them. “Bobby wasn't from Calvert Pass. This never would've happened if I hadn't insisted on moving back home… if we hadn't stayed after my parents passed... I don't know how I'll ever be able to face them."

"I'm sure they'll understand," Scully said gently. "Family's more forgiving than you'd expect, sometimes."

"It'll be good for the girls to be somewhere else," said Haswell. "With family." Her hands clasped awkwardly in front of her. "Thank you for coming for me, Mulder. And both of you, for taking care of Lyla and Anna... after I got you involved..."

"Thank you for sending the cops back for me," Mulder said, extending his hand. Haswell smiled a little and shook it.

Scully stepped forward and hugged her. "Let me know if you need anything, and I'll pull the FBI card," she murmured. 

"Thank you, Scully." Haswell hugged her tightly before pulling away. "I'm so glad I met you two," she said softly. Scully smiled at her. 

Behind Haswell, the door opened and Lyla and Anna came out. "Dana! Mulder!" Lyla chirped happily, throwing her arms around Scully. "Mommy said you were here!"

"She said you got out okay," Anna added, cautiously, staring at them. 

"We did," Scully said, stroking Lyla’s hair once. 

The little girl pulled away and came over to hug Mulder. He stiffened in surprise, but smiled and returned the hug. "We're glad you got out, too," he added. 

Lyla offered Mulder a small smile and said "I'm glad you didn't get soul-snatched by an evil scarecrow.”

Mulder coughed awkwardly. "I... me too." Scully smiled, hand brushing his back.

"We're gonna go visit our grandparents," Lyla told them, scrambling back over to stand beside her mother and sister. "Mommy says we're going to be happy."

Mulder looked at their little clustered family. Haswell had her arm around Anna, who was leaning into her; Lyla put her head against Anna's arm. They looked ragtag but close, almost like him and Scully. "That's great," he said. "I'm sure you guys are gonna be very happy."

\---

Sometime that afternoon, they got home. Scully drove them straight to Mulder's apartment. It was bizarrely clean, he was missing a molly, and his sheets smelled like Scully. They crawled wordlessly into bed, Mulder curling as a support against Scully's back. They slept, dreamless, for the better part of two days. 

\---

Robert Haswell had grown up on a farm in Kansas. He'd brought his gawky girlfriend, one Mari Westin from podunk North Carolina, home for Thanksgiving in their junior year of college. He'd loved it and she'd hated it, said she missed home. Now the opposite was true, it seemed; she harbored a hate for Calvert’s Pass, thought the stunning warmth of Kansas was comforting. And she suspected Bobby was happy enough in Calvert Pass, despite what it had done to him. It was where their girls had been born, where they'd spent the majority of their marriage. He had loved it when she'd brought him home, insisted they move back after they got married. He thought it would be a perfect place to raise a big family. 

They'd figured out about the cult in 1990, when Anna was a year old. Haswell had applied for position after position at the local police station and her application had been shot down every time. And she suddenly knew why: they didn't know what she'd do if she found out about the cult. And then they had and it had all exploded. 

She'd wanted to leave right away, but Bobby told her it was a bad idea. "They're watching us, Mari," he'd said over Anna's high chair at dinner one night. "It's a small town, who knows what will happen if we try to leave? What they'll do to Anna?" And looking at her daughter's small face, in the moment it hadn't been worth it. To risk her. And years later, after Bobby was dead, it had seemed even less worth it. If she could do nothing else, she could protect his daughters. Keep them safe and alive. Try to be happy. 

(She'd gotten her job as deputy after Bobby died. Like fucking compensation.)

And now here she was on her husband's farm. Walking the footsteps of her husband's ghost. It felt right, almost. Like she was closer to him even though he wasn't buried here. 

Lyla ran squealing to meet her grandparents as soon as Haswell stopped the car but Anna hung back, leaning her head on her mother's shoulder. She'd been clingy since that night in the woods, and Haswell didn't blame her. She wrapped an arm around Anna's shoulders.

"Mom, you've been quiet since the plane landed," Anna said, leaning into her.

Haswell poked her in the side. "You've been quiet, too, you know." Anna made a face at her, and she sighed. "It's been a long couple of days, honey. I'm just as tired as I'm sure you are."

"Sure," said Anna at length. "You're nervous about seeing Grandma and Grandpa, aren't you?"

She'd called them to tell them Bobby had been murdered instead of dying in an accident the other day. The cadence of her mother-in-law's voice over the phone had been shaky, uncertain. Haswell couldn't read her tone. She'd been nervous about this ever since.

"I feel guilty," she said finally, quietly. "About what happened to your father, you girls..."

"Mom." Anna held up a hand to stop her. "I think you did great. Uncle Jeff... the people back home were insane. Did you know even Penny’s dad was involved? Everything was working against you, basically. I don't even know how those FBI agent people got out okay. You did the best you could. Grandma and Grandpa understand that. And besides, Daddy doesn't blame you."

Haswell's breath caught. "How do you know?"

"I dreamed about him," she said. "He said he loved and missed us. And he said he didn't blame you. He said it wasn't your fault."

Haswell took a shaky breath. Her eyes were wet and she wiped them with the tips of her fingers. Bobby didn't blame her. Even if the news came from a supposed dream, it was comforting. Besides, after all the things she'd seen through the years, it wasn't the most unusual thing in the world. "Thank you, honey," she said softly, kissing the tousled top of Anna's head. 

Lyla was hugging Bobby's father now, and his mother was headed towards them. She went to Anna first, hugging her tightly. Haswell stood awkwardly, waiting, not expecting a hug until her mother-in-law came and wrapped her arms around her. "Mari," she murmured softly. "It is so good to see you."

Haswell teared up, hugging her back tightly. "Hi," she murmured. "I'm so sorry."

"Enough of that," her mother-in-law chided. "It is not your fault. Come inside and relax, you must be exhausted."

_ We'll be happy now _ , Haswell had told Lyla when they'd gotten to their hotel room. But this was the first time she'd believed it.

\---

It turned out Scully had kept food in his apartment (“I was over here a lot,” she said, embarrassed, and he'd kissed the top of her head) so Mulder insisted on making breakfast. He burned the eggs, of course, but Scully insisted she didn't care. They ate off their laps on the couch, something they hadn't done since the night before he'd left for Oregon. 

“Hey, Scully,” Mulder said suddenly, 

“Hmm?” She shuffled her eggs around her plate. 

“I don't think I should stay here anymore.”

She looked up at him in surprise. “Why not?”

“Well, there's no space for the baby here,” he said. A stunned but pleased smile spread over her face, and she looked down at her lap. “Your place, on the other hand…”

“Mulder, are you asking to move in with me?”

“Something like that,” he told her, covering her hand with his on the leather of the couch. 

She grinned wider, turning her hand up under his so they matched palms. “Well. Maybe I'll say something like yes.”

“Conveniently enough, I already have a key," he said, and leaned down to kiss her.

\---

Mulder had some ideas for baby names. He presented them to Scully over her comforter. She alternately wrinkled her nose or jabbed him in the side or yanked the comforter over her head. She still refused to tell him whether it was a boy or a girl. In the moment, in pajamas in Scully's sunlight bedroom, he didn't think he'd mind. 

He took her to Lamaze and spouted off some wisdom from watching Oprah while she slept in. He went to an appointment he'd made with Karen Kosseff, and then picked Scully up to go to the doctor (who looked surprised to see him, but didn't comment outside of, “Is this the father?”). They went through the normal procedures, the doctor putting an emphasis on as much rest as possible, before getting ready for the ultrasound. Scully grabbed his hand in hers, resting her head against his ribcage as the doctor spread the gel across her abdomen. “I wish I could've been here the first time,” Mulder whispered. “And the second and the third and…”

She squeezed his hand. “You're here now.”

The baby appeared onscreen. “Here we are,” the doctor said. “Eight weeks. What do you think, Dad?”

Mulder gripped Scully's hand in both of his. His eyes were glued to the screen. Scully smiled, pressing her face into the crook of his elbow. “Hi, kid,” he whispered. 

\---

The town of Calvert Pass was crumbling. The cult had been found out, a book Reverend Greene had kept in his office. All the members were arrested. Jeff Renner, Reverend Sam Greene, and Dr. Terrence Calvert had all been found dead from gunshot wounds. And Dr. Tom Henderson beside them. His wife had wailed when they told her, collapsing against the doorframe.

It was unknown who the shooter was. 

Days later, the snow had melted. A coat was no longer necessary; spring had come. Lucinda Henderson stood in the cemetery with a wilting bouquet of flowers in her hand. She was looking down at her husband's shiny new tombstone. The funeral had been scrapped together and almost no one had attended; half the town was either in custody or gone. And no one who was left was interested in the funeral of a cultist.

"Fuck you," Lucinda murmured. She was tempted to kick the headstone. "Fuck you, Tom. If you hadn't gotten involved with this... killed those people... than this never would've happened." That damn FBI agent. Why had they thought this would ever work? She didn't know who'd killed her husband, but she wished they were dead, too.

"Fuck you," she muttered again and turned, heels sinking into the spring mud.

"I know you don't mean that, dear."

Lucinda froze, shivering wildly. She knew that voice, but she didn't want to believe it. 

"Come on, Lu. You know it's me."

The bright spring day suddenly seemed ominous, too dark and choking. Lucinda closed her eyes and tried not to scream.  _ Please _ , she thought,  _ don't let it be true. _

"Sweetheart." It was the voice of Tom.

There was the familiar scrape of straw against bark. She'd heard it, once, when Tom took her to watch the scarecrows. But it couldn't be. 

"Come over here and see me," Tom said. 

Lucinda dropped the flowers and turned towards the woods. Between the trees she saw a flash of flannel, a straw hand, a burlap face. "Tom?" she called cautiously.

"It's me, Lu." The voice sounded happy. "Come here. Come see me. We can go home. You can fix dinner and we can watch Jeopardy. I bet I'll beat you tonight."

Lucinda held her breath so she wouldn't scream. That thing could not be her husband. She thought little Anna Haswell burned them all, she thought it was over. "You're dead, Tom," she said. 

"Don't be silly, of course I'm not. Now come here and see me."

Lucinda went. She couldn't run, not from her husband's voice. A voice she thought she'd never hear again. She walked forward into the trees, holding her breath again. She didn't know what to expect.

And then she heard more scraping. Straw over dead leaves. There were more scarecrows, dozens. Not just Tom. She saw flashes of bent hats, beaked noses, stitched smiles. "Tom?" she called again.

"Here, Lu. Right here."

Lucinda Henderson turned towards the voice. 

Seconds later, a scream echoed through the empty cemetery. 

The wind whistled through the mountain in response, rustling the new leaves. Spring had come. The snow was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this is partially based off a true story.
> 
> over christmas break in 2016, my family spent the week in a cabin in the mountains. it was tiny, with walls so thin that you could pretty much hear everyone’s conversations word for word if you were in the room next to or above them. there were other cabins all around us, but we never saw the other residents. one day, we went to town and passed a house with a row of eerie scarecrows (with beaks). it soon became an inside joke that the scarecrows were evil, and killed tourists in the name of keeping the town alive. (my cousin and brother made a lot of supernatural references i didn’t get.)
> 
> one snowy night we went to the movies. it was eerily quiet going home. we went down a dark country road. my stepfather started singing a creepy song. all us kids yelled at him to stop but he kept going, and then everyone in the car screamed as we passed the fence of scarecrows.
> 
> i knew our made-up story was (probably) bullshit, but still. i was sleeping downstairs alone, on the couch, and at night, it seemed much more likely that i would see a burlap face at the window...
> 
> everything else in this story - the town, the ORIGINAL characters, the necromancy, and actually seeing the scarecrows walk - is all made up. but the scarecrows i stole from that vacation, that cold weekend in the mountains.


End file.
